Need help understanding and programming RSS

[jyo]

I want to create an RSS for my personal website.

I found some information on RSS format, copied the example and saved it locally as a .xml. However, when I perform a File->Open in Safari, I get a "can't open the page" error.

I am googling rss but I feel I am missing how a browser/newsreader consumes the .xml file.

Does anyone have a good link?

[chucker]

(Not to be pedantic, but RSS is not a programming language. You write it; you don't program it.)

Can you post the example markup you have? Also, what version of RSS are we talking about?

[ghoti]

Safari doesn't know what to do with the file, because it's just an XML file. The usual way to use RSS is to provide a link inside the HTML head, like this (taken from the CNN page):
<link rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml" title="CNN - Top Stories [RSS]" href="http://rss.cnn.com/rss/cnn_topstories.rss">
<link rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml" title="CNN - Recent Stories [RSS]" href="http://rss.cnn.com/rss/cnn_latest.rss">

If you do that, you will see the RSS logo on the right side of the address bar, and when you click it, Safari will go to a URL that starts with "feed://". You can probably do that by hand, by it makes much more sense to embed it inside a webpage.

[rollercoaster375]

Are you talking about RDF/RSS or RSS? (0.9x, 2.0 = RSS, 1.0 = RDF/RSS)

There are major differences in syntax, and there may even be a lack of support for RDF/RSS in Safari (I don't use it for my feed viewing).

My only suggestion would be to use ".rss" as the file extention, hopefully, that will give the proper MIME type.

[chucker]

In fact, there's almost a dozen difference versions of RSS (http://diveintomark.org/archives/2004/02/04/incompatible-rss), so you'll want to use Atom. ;)

[rollercoaster375]

Well, that's somewhat true, but there aren't any parsers for the RSS3s.

But even so, Atom is probably one of the best formats ever invented.

EDIT: Read your link. It doesn't even mention the RSS3s, so I suppose I should link to them.

RSS3/RSS3 Lite: http://www.rss3.org
RSS3 (Without XML!): http://www.aaronsw.com/2002/rss30


Durring this research, I found out that 'RSS3' is the name of commodity rubber.

And a second edit! RDF/RSS 1.1 (http://inamidst.com/rss1.1/)