Using RSS News Feeds

RSS 0.9

The first public version of RSS, 0.9, includes basic headline information. Below is an example RSS file for Freshmeat.net, a popular news site for Linux software:

<?xml version="1.0"?> <rdf:RDF xmlns:rdf="http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#" xmlns="http://my.netscape.com/rdf/simple/0.9/"> <channel> <title>freshmeat.net</title> <link>http://freshmeat.net</link> <description>the one-stop-shop for all your Linux softwar needs</description> </channel> <image> <title>freshmeat.net</title> <url>http://freshmeat.net/images/fm.mini.jpg</url> <link>http://freshmeat.net</link> </image> <item> <title>Geheimnis 0.59</title> <link>http://freshmeat.net/news/1999/06/21/930004162.html</link> </item> <item> <title>Firewall Manager 1.3 PRO</title> <link>http://freshmeat.net/news/1999/06/21/930004148.html</link> </item> <textinput> <title>quick finder</title> <description>Use the text input below to search the fresh meat application database</description> <name>query</name> <link>http://core.freshmeat.net/search.php3</link> </textinput> </rdf:RDF>

The first major element is channel which contains the following elements:

• title - the title of the channel
• link - the link to the channel Web site
• description - short description of the channel

An RSS channel may also contain an image element as in the example above which contains the following elements:

• title - the text describing the image
• url - the URL of the image
• link - the URL that the image is linked to

The item element contains the real channel content which is comprised of a title and a link element. An RSS file may contain up to 15 items.

An RSS 0.9 file may alternatively contain a textinput element which allows users to type a string into a HTML text input field and submit it via the HTTP GET method to the URL specified in the link element.

Next, we will examine RSS 0.91 which was released by Netscape in July of 1999.