Customer Reviews

Developing Feeds with Rss and Atom

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

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.

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.

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

This book has some great info on RSS and Atom, although not as up to date as one might hope. This book, like the O'Reilly RSS book before it, has a good 1/2 of the book dedicated to PERL specific programming ideas.

Since I don't program in PERL, and can't necessarily follow along, I would much rather have seen more conceptual discussion about RSS/Atom possibiliities than the specific (PERL only) few examples.

Comments for instance - RSS has a <comments> tag, but the book doesn't go into depth at all on how to use it. As a webmaster of several blogs, I'd like to know more about the "right" way to do comments - is it as a separate feed? Can I put them inline? How do other people do it? What's the benefits one way or the other?

Overall, a good book, don't get me wrong. I'd just hoped for something a bit different, and hopefully that'll come soon.

O'Reilly's other book on RSS related technologies, Practical RDF, was not very practical at all. This book, on the other hand, addresses a variety of real feed production and consumption topics in a set of language. You will learn the feed standards. But you will learn them through application, not abstraction. And I find that much more effective than a book that presents technologies at the standards level (most of which you never use anyway). Then leaves you hanging.

I got an opportunity to review another RSS/Atom title called Developing Feeds with RSS and Atom by Ben Hammersley (O'Reilly). This is a pretty focused title targeted for developers.

Chapter List: Introduction; Using Feeds; Feeds Without Programming; RSS 2.0; RSS 1.0; RSS 1.0 Modules; The Atom Syndication Format; Parsing and Using Feeds; Feeds in the Wild; Unconventional Feeds; Developing New Modules; The XML You Need for RSS; Useful Sites and Software; Index

The author spends just a little time talking about the whys of RSS/Atom feeds and then dives into the guts of each of the specifications. For the developer looking to learn how to develop a syndicated feed, this focus will probably be highly appreciated. Another interesting part of the book is explanations of the politics behind the three main standards (RSS 1.0, RSS 2.0, and Atom). Unlike most naming standards, RSS 2.0 isn't an update of RSS 1.0, and Atom is a third beast that must be accounted for. When you read the history of how each one came into being, it makes a bit more sense as to how we got into this position. Doesn't make it any easier to accommodate things, but at least you can understand it.

From a programming perspective, most of the code is done in Perl with a smattering of Ruby and PHP mixed in. I personally would have liked to see a bit more attention paid to Java, but I guess you can't have everything. You can at least use the programs to get ideas on potential solutions even if you don't use/know Perl.

Overall, a good treatment of an important technology in today's internet environment, and a book that will be useful as you start to add syndication into your applications.

Blogs have become huge lately. And in related ways, so too has the idea of a parseable news feed. To try and enable all this, the book explains RSS and Atom. It's directed towards programmers working on a web site.

It is an awkward book to read, as it describes the RSS versions 1 and 2. Unlike other standards or software packages, where a version 2 supersedes version 1, here the RSS versions compete with each other! Yes, they are similar. But not quite. It is this dissimilarity that will give you heartburn. Hammersley explains that in general, when you connect up to an RSS feed, you can't tell which version it supports. So you have to grunge your code to support both. Grr!!

Worse, as he continues to explain, sometimes a newsfeed is not fully compliant with either version. Due to a combination of poor programming by that supplier and ambiguities in the interpretations of the RSS versions. Plus it gets "better". Some feeds are not even valid XML. Yuk! So you have to decide who liberal your parser should be. Analogous to the poorly formed HTML pages out there on the web, and the subsequent decisions by browsers as to how tolerant they should be of these.

Hammersley has done a decent job explaining RSS. It's just a miserable subject to code.

Publishing on the Internet is evolving. I picked this book up to learn the tools and practices necessary to develop content feeds for websites. RSS and Atom are the foundation of this technology.

The first three small chapters cover the history and evolution of the syndication formats. While Atom is included in the title, it is definitely a second class citizen in this book. The author explains that this is due to the immaturity of the specification. Developers looking for in-depth code examples of using and creating Atom feeds will be disappointed. It is mentioned that later editions of the book will cover this emerging format.

For those Perl mongers, you will appreciate the significant use of Perl in the examples. While this was not particularly attractive to me, the author does provide fairly straightforward illustrations that are not too difficult to understand and implement in the language of your choice. That being said, I believe that non-Perl initiated persons will most likely be "Googling" a bit. There are a few samples in PHP that are included as well.

The book does describe many unconventional uses for RSS as well. My favorite gem is a reference to Halo 2 gaming statistics that are available via a RSS 2.0 feed. The author also provides the link to an Excel workbook, created by a Microsoft program manager, which records, charts, and analyzes the game results data.

Overall, I liked this book. This book is targeted to developers, and it provided me with the information that I was looking for to add content syndication to my web applications. While there is good coverage of the RSS and Atom formats, I do feel that I will be looking for another text to provide some additional guidance on the practical patterns for implementation.

One of the very best O'Reilly books I've read in a long time, is Developing Feeds with RSS and Atom by Ben Hammersley. On 240 odd pages, the author introduces the reader to syndication, feeds, the RSS dialects, the Atom syndication format and discusses parsing of feeds and creating feeds. This he does concisely and to the point but with a sense of humor which I greatly enjoy.

The only thing which might be expanded on in a second edition, would be how different RSS reader applications react to feed content. Never the less, I highly recommend this book to anybody wanting to get inside RSS feeds.

Great intro to the history of RDF/RSS/Atom. Chapter 10 "Unconventional Feeds" will give you great ideas to create and manipulate feeds for yourself. Note that some content has been republished from "Content Syndication with RSS" (0596003838).