Developing Feeds with Rss and Atom [Paperback]

Ben Hammersley (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0596008813 | ISBN-13: 978-0596008819 | Publication Date: April 20, 2005 | Edition: 1

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.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Hammersley's pevious RSS book was seminal, this one is definitive." - Davey Winder, PC Plus, September (PC Plus Editor's Choice) 9/10

About the Author

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.

Product Details

• Paperback: 272 pages
• Publisher: O'Reilly Media; 1 edition (April 20, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0596008813
• ISBN-13: 978-0596008819
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 7 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #422,074 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #55 in Books > Computers & Technology > Programming > Languages & Tools > XML

More About the Author

Ben Hammersley is a British writer and journalist, based in Florence, Italy. Previously writing as the first Internet reporter for The Times, he currently contributes to The Guardian.

Unlike many technology writers, Hammersley's stories often result from reporting from dangerous countries. He has worked in Iran and Afghanistan and interviewed the Burmese opposition leader and Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi.

Hammersley has been influential in the RSS community and coined the term podcasting. He built and maintains the Lazyweb, and the weblogs of The Guardian. He is attributed with the first Warchalking in the wild, on a street corner in Kensington, London in June 2002.

Hammersley also regularly contributes to congresses and conferences, such as the O'Reilly Emerging Technology Conference, the O'Reilly Open Source Convention and the Global Investigative Journalism Conference. He is a member of the advisory council of the Open Rights Group.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

24 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Sorely Lacking Content, October 26, 2005

By 

ths - See all my reviews

This review is from: Developing Feeds with Rss and Atom (Paperback)

This book has some good resource citings, and general information on RSS. It includes a lot of discussion on the previous iterations in the RSS geneology...up to the current RSS 2.0 specification.

The index is not very thorough.

I bought the book hoping to learn more about RSS feed development (as the title suggests). I was greatly disappointed. There is one chapter dedicated to RSS 2.0. Within the chapter there is a section entitled "Creating RSS 2.0 Feeds." This section--you would think is the core of the book-- is 8 pages long (if that) including 3 pages of Perl code examples.

Good luck if you want to learn about creating Atom feeds from this publication. There is a 14 page chapter dedicated to Atom. It is prefaced with a disclaimer indicating that code in the chapter may fail due to version rot (and to surf the web for answers). Also in this chapter, there is a section entitled "Producing Atom Feeds." This consists of 2 brief paragraphs explaining how the current Atom version is not worth addressing and suggests purchasing the next edition of the book to find out how to produce feeds using up to date libraries!!!
You can draw your own conclusions from all that.

This book falls far short of the quality O'Reilly books of yore.

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Good General Development Guide, May 10, 2005

By 

Jase T. Wolfe - See all my reviews

This review is from: Developing Feeds with Rss and Atom (Paperback)

Both individuals who know what RSS/Atom feeds are but need information on how to develop and implement them, as well as intermediate users already publishing a feed and looking for more progressive information, will find value in this title. Advanced users will most likely not find anything they don't already know. Covering RSS 1.0, RSS 2.0 and Atom .05, readers are walked thru the basics and intermediate concepts of implementation starting with a general background history, end-user reader requirements and options, and syntax usage for each version. The book then concludes with more intensive topics, such as usage of industry standard RSS modules, development of custom RSS modules, syndication thru services or direct publication, as well as third-party utility scripts and resources.

A few items set this title apart. First, the author has not dedicated this only to those who wish to perform serious syndication. Time is spent both showing how anyone regardless of skill level can publish a feed without programming, and teaching them how to use various styles of feed readers and the etiquette behind subscribing. For those who wish to go beyond basic feed development, the author dedicates entire chapters to things such as RSS modules (by RSS version), programmatically developed feeds, creating feeds which self-publish data from other web sites or databases, and publishing your feed for various platforms. Readers should be aware that the majority of scripts presented within the title are in Perl or PHP, and either a working knowledge of those languages or of any scriptable language will be needed if you intend to go beyond the beginning / intermediate level; not having this knowledge does not detract from the overall value of the book.

This title shows that RSS/Atom feeds are not just for the minority any more. Complete chapters are dedicated to all three formats, presenting all material in and easy to read and understand format without wasting your time with fluff or thinly disguised plugs for 3rd party products. This is a good general guide that will maintain value after your initial read.

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A useful little book, May 18, 2005

By 

Foti Massimo (Vezia (Switzerland)) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Developing Feeds with Rss and Atom (Paperback)

This is a useful little book; the whole main content is around 200 pages and the author's pleasant writing style makes it really easy to read in a day or two. The amount of pages isn't huge but, in my opinion, provides an effective coverage of RSS. Most code listings use Perl, making them useless for people (like me) using other languages but this doesn't really affect the book too much, since the goal isn't to provide a collection of coding recipes. This new edition doesn't cover RSS 0.9x anymore but has a nice chapter on Atom