RSS Magic FAQ

1. What is RSS? Why should I use it?
2. Why does the RSS Magic component let me create incomplete RSS feeds?
3. What are the required elements of a valid RSS feed?
4. What versions of the RSS specification are supported?

1. What is RSS? Why should I use it?

RSS stands for "Really Simple Syndication". It is a standardized form of XML that is used for syndicating news, personal weblogs, and pretty much anything that can be broken down into discrete items. Examples include a "recent changes" page of a webpage, a changelog of CVS checkins, even the revision history of a book. Once information about each item is in RSS format, an RSS-aware program can check the feed for changes and react to the changes in an appropriate way.

RSS-aware programs called news aggregators are popular in the weblogging community. Many weblogs make content available in RSS. A news aggregator can help you keep up with all your favorite weblogs by checking their RSS feeds and displaying new items from each of them.

More information on the RSS 2.0 spec can be found at the Technology at Harvard Law website. Many of the descriptions of the various RSS elements found in the RSS Magic helpfile were obtained from that website.

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2. Why does the RSS Magic component let me create incomplete RSS feeds?

The RSS component provides all of the mechanics nesessary to create a complete RSS feed. However, it is up to you, the developer, to ensure your RSS feed contains all of the required items. The following two examples demonstrate situations where reading/writing incomplete RSS feeds are necessary:

1. You create an application that allows users to create their own RSS feeds. It would be wise to allow your users the ability to save their work-in-progress. Your application would need to be able to read and write incomplete RSS feeds.
2. You create an application that reads existing RSS feeds from various sources. You do not know what RSS tool was used to create the feeds. The originator of the RSS feed might even have manually-coded the xml in some generic text editor like Notepad. Our RSS component allows your application to read as much of the RSS info provided as possible, whether it is complete or not.

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3. What are the required elements of a valid RSS feed?

In order for an RSS feed to be considered valid, it must contain these elements:

• A root rss element with a version attribute. You do not have to worry about this when using the RSS Magic component because it is handled for you automatically.
• A single channel. The channel must contain a title, a link, and a description.
• The channel can contain any number of items. According to the specs, items are optional, although in most cases it does not make much sense to have an RSS feed without any items. If an item is present it must have either a title or description.

All other elements (or properties in the RSS Magic component) are optional.

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4. What versions of the RSS specification are supported?

The RSS Magic component will currently read RSS version 0.9x and 2.0, and write RSS 2.0 only. Since RSS 1.0 is different in structure than 0.9x and 2.0, version 1.0 support has been left out of this release, but will be included in a future release. Don't worry, all customers will receive all future updates FREE FOR LIFE.

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