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Syndicating Articles and Headlines: RSS and Related Specifications

Using XML as an intermediate content format offers exciting new opportunities for "syndicating" content, thus making it conveniently available for reuse or re-purposing by other Web sites and applications.

XML.com's July 2000 Special Issue, Syndicating XML, is an excellent place to start, as it offers three introductory articles on the topic of content syndication via XML. (Two of these articles are also listed individually below.)

The following are other selected resources related to content syndication:

RDF Site Summary (previously Rich Site Summary) (RSS)

RDF Site Summary (RSS) - also known as Rich Site Summary in versions prior to 1.0 - is the most widely-used XML-based syndication format. It has primarily been used to syndicate brief news headlines, allowing them to be published on other Web sites, as well as being used by various applications. These headlines always include links which point to longer articles, and can optionally include brief article descriptions.

The RSS format is sufficiently general, however, to be useful for syndicating other types of compact content. Commentary on the RSS 1.0 Specification Proposal mentions that RSS has been used for purposes as diverse as "discussion threads, job listings, multiple listings (homes), [and] sports scores."

There are three major versions of RSS: 0.90, 0.91, and 1.0. Relative to version 0.91, version 1.0 adds Resource Description Framework (RDF) metadata tags and provides for extensibility via modules. As of this writing (early December 2000), some RSS-related tools will still require updating to work with the final 1.0 version. WebReference's article, RSS 1.0: The New Syndication Format, briefly describes RSS's evolution, and the RSS 1.0 Specification Proposal details the differences between all three versions.

Overview

Rael Dornfest's article, RSS: Lightweight Web Syndication presents an overview of the evolution and uses of RSS.

RSS resources and links

• Aaron Swartz's RSS Info Web site keeps up with developments regarding RSS tools and specifications.
• Internet.com's WebReference Web site provides an extensive list of RSS-related articles, tutorials, tools, and other resources.

Some places to find RSS content

• Moreover repackages content from over 1,500 sources into outgoing feeds in RSS and other formats.
• xmlTree is a directory of XML content available on the Internet, including RSS-formatted content.

Creating your own RSS content

• In its Quick Start guide, My Netscape Network Help, Netscape describes how to create RSS version 0.91 documents. (Among other applications, RSS documents can be incorporated as 'channels' into users' customized My Netscape portals.)
• WebReference.com offers the RSS Channel Editor, a Web-based, fill-in-the-forms tool for generating RSS 0.91 documents.
• Rael Dornfest's Writing RSS 1.0 is "a step-by-step guide to building an RSS 1.0 document by hand."
• Libby Miller provides a Web-based, fill-in-the-forms tool for generating RSS 1.0 documents.

RSS programming examples

• Randal L. Schwartz's WebTechniques Column 45 (January 2000) provides an annotated 'walk-through' of a Perl script which retrieves current news headlines and associated URLs from RSS content sources, then sends them via e-mail.
• Chris Nandor's MyPortal is a customized portal, with full Perl source code, for integrating multiple RSS-based content sources.
• WebReference offers several XSLT-based RSS transformation examples and content creation and registration tutorials on its Exploring XML page.

Other syndication formats

While RSS is widely used for syndication of headlines and other forms of similarly compact information, there are also a number of "heavy duty" specifications for syndicating complete news articles or media collections, the latter consisting of articles, images, video, and related content. Each of these standards incorporates a unique mix of one or more data formats, 'envelope' and metadata formats, and transfer protocols.

Edd Dumbill's article, XML in News Syndication, compares five leading XML-based specifications for syndicating news articles and media collections: NITF, XMLNews, NewsML, PRISM, and ICE. He notes that:

The technologies mentioned in this article are at varying levels of completeness and implementation. Also, they each have slight overlaps as they have been developed by differing groups and with different goals. What is very encouraging, though, is that each of the initiatives are being pursued with both extensibility and compatibility in mind, and are looking as though they will play nicely with each other.

For pursuing content syndication right now, the two most stable activities are NITF and ICE, both of which are good places to start looking. ...

URL:http://seaotter.berkeley.edu/xml/syndication-formats.html
Last modified on Friday, 19-Oct-2001 17:08:11 PDT