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.

Amazon.com® Reader Reviews (Ranked by Helpfulness)

Average Amazon.com® Rating:  Based on 11 Ratings

Sorely Lacking Content - 2005-10-26
Reviewer Rating:
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.

Good, but heavy on the PERL - 2005-07-03
Reviewer Rating:

Far more practical than Practical RDF - 2005-06-21
Reviewer Rating:
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.

Might have been called The Definitive Guide to RSS - 2006-06-27
Reviewer Rating:
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.

Get your creative juices flowing - 2006-03-10
Reviewer Rating:
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).

Browse Similar Topics

Top Level Categories:
Desktop Publishing
E-Commerce
Human-Computer Interaction
Internet/Online
Markup Languages

Sub-Categories:
Desktop Publishing > XML
E-Commerce > Syndication
Human-Computer Interaction > Content Generation/Writing
Internet/Online > XML
Markup Languages > RDF
Markup Languages > XML