Developing Feeds with RSS and Atom: Developers Guide to Syndicating News & Blogs

Perhaps the most explosive technological trend over the past two years has been blogging. As a matter of fact, it's been reported that the number of blogs during that time has grown from 100,000 to 4.8 million-with no end to this growth in sight. What's the technology that makes blogging tick? The answer is RSS--a format that allows bloggers to offer XML-based feeds of their content. It's also the same technology that's incorporated into the websites of media outlets so they can offer material (headlines, links, articles, etc.) syndicated by other sites. As the main technology behind this rapidly growing field of content syndication, RSS is constantly evolving to keep pace with worldwide demand. That's where Developing Feeds with RSS and Atom steps in. It provides bloggers, web developers, and programmers with a thorough explanation of syndication in general and the most popular technologies used to develop feeds. This book not only highlights all the new features of RSS 2.0-the most recent RSS specification-but also offers complete coverage of its close second in the XML-feed arena, Atom. The book has been exhaustively revised to explain:

• metadata interpretation
• the different forms of content syndication
• the increasing use of web services
• how to use popular RSS news aggregators on the market

After an introduction that examines Internet content syndication in general (its purpose, limitations, and traditions), this step-by-step guide tackles various RSS and Atom vocabularies, as well as techniques for applying syndication to problems beyond news feeds. Most importantly, it gives you a firm handle on how to create your own feeds, and consume or combine other feeds. If you're interested in producing your own content feed, Developing Feeds with RSS and Atom is the one book you'll want in hand.

Ben Hammersley is a journalist, technologist, and broadcaster. As a foreign reporter, he has worked in Iran, Afghanistan, Burma, and Beirut. As a technologist he has written books for O'Reilly and others, built sites for the Guardian and the BBC, and consulted for the UK government. He is principal of Dangerous Precedent Ltd, and Associate Editor of the UK edition of Wired.