What is an RSS feed?

RSS belongs to the family of XML formats and is intended to describe the latest updates of Internet resources, such as news, publications of new articles, updates on blogs, etc. Almost any text content that can be divided into separate parts can be provided in RSS format. Usually, RSS provides a brief description of new information appearing on the site and a link to its full version. A resource in the RSS format is usually called an RSS channel or RSS feed.

Version 2.0 of the RSS format supports extensions through elements using XML namespaces.

What does an RSS feed look like?

A document in RSS format must contain a mandatory channel section, which contains the child sections that describe the RSS feed, and the item sections that provide information about the updates.

Channel element

Required child elements:

• title – RSS feed title
• link – website URL
• description – short RSS feed description

Optional Elements (not Require):

• pubDate – date of last publication
• image – link to the RSS feed logo

Other optional elements: webMaster, managingEditor, language, copyright, lastBuildDate, category, generator, docs, cloud, ttl, rating, textInput, skipHours, skipDays.

    <hannel>
        <title>Feed Title (String)</title>
        <link>Website URL</link>
        <description>Feed Description (String)</description>
        ...
            <item>...</item>
        ...
    </channel>

Item sections

RSS feed can contain any number of item sections; item elements are optional.

• title – publication header
• link – publication URL
• description – short content description
• pubDate – publication date

Other elements that can be used: author, category, comments, enclosure, guid, source.

    <item>
        <title>Item Title (String)</title>
        <link>Item URL</link>
        <description>Item Description (String)</description>
        ...
    </item>