feeds
Notes on various feeds
rss
RSS is an XML-based syndication format commonly used by blogs and podcasts.
<rss xmlns:atom="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom" version="2.0">
<channel>
<title>avanier's journal</title>
<link>https://avanier.dev/journal</link>
<description>journal</description>
<generator>arachne</generator>
<lastBuildDate>Tue, 26 Nov 2024 07:16:42 GMT</lastBuildDate>
<item>
<title>oasis</title>
<link>https://avanier.dev/oasis</link>
<description>distancing from search engines</description>
<pubDate>Thu, 14 Nov 2024 13:21:13 GMT</pubDate>
<guid>https://avanier.dev/oasis</guid>
</item>
</channel>Linking to an RSS feed:
<!-- add to head -->
<link rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml" title="avanier's journal (rss)" href="journal.xml">
<a href="journal.xml" rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml">feed</a>atom
Atom is another XML-based syndication feed format
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<feed xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom">
<generator>arachne</generator>
<title>avanier's journal</title>
<link rel="self" href="https://avanier.dev/journal.atom"/>
<link rel="alternate" href="https://avanier.dev" type="text/html"/>
<updated>2024-11-14T13:21:13.930Z</updated>
<id>https://avanier.dev/journal</id>
<author>
<name>Josh Avanier</name>
<uri>https://avanier.dev/josh</uri>
</author>
<entry>
<title>oasis</title>
<id>https://avanier.dev/oasis</id>
<link rel="alternate" href="https://avanier.dev/oasis" type="text/html"/>
<updated>2024-11-14T13:21:13.930Z</updated>
<summary>distancing from search engines</summary>
</entry>
</feed>Linking to an Atom feed:
<!-- add to head -->
<link rel="alternate" type="application/atom+xml" title="avanier's journal (atom)" href="journal.atom">
<a href="journal.atom" rel="alternate" type="application/atom+xml">feed</a>guidelines
- Timestamps use RFC 3339*
| id | mandatory |
| title | mandatory |
| updated | mandatory, last modified timestamp |
| author | multiple authors are allowed; optional if there’s an author element in <feed> |
| content | required if there’s no alternate link or summary |
| summary | entry summary or excerpt |
| category | optional, multiple categories are allowed |
| contributor | optional, multiple contributors are allowed |
| published | optional, published date |
| rights | optional, copyright info |
json feed
A JSON Feed is a syndication format, similar to Atom and RSS, just using JSON.
{
"version":1.1,
"title":"avanier's journal",
"home_page_url":"https://avanier.dev/journal",
"feed_url":"https://avanier.dev/journal.json",
"authors":[{"name":"Josh Avanier","url":"https://avanier.dev/josh"}],
"language":"en",
"items":[
{
"id":"https://avanier.dev/oasis",
"url":"https://avanier.dev/oasis",
"title":"oasis",
"content_text":"distancing from search engines",
"date_published":"2024-11-14T13:21:13.930Z",
"date_modified":"2024-11-14T13:21:13.930Z"
}
]
}Linking to a JSON feed:
<!-- add to head -->
<link rel="alternate" type="application/json" title="avanier's journal (jsonfeed)" href="journal.json">
<a href="journal.json" rel="alternate" type="application/json">feed</a>twtxt
twtxt is a text file that contains status updates of a single user.
- The file should contain one status per line
- Each line is an RFC 3339 date-time string and the status, separated by a tab character
- The file needs to be UTF-8 encoded and use LF line separators
- Limit statuses to 140 characters
You can use the Python client but I just use a small script to update twtxt:
#!/usr/bin/env sh
printf "%s\t%s\n" "$(date -Is)" "$1" | tee -a ~/tw.txt
openstories
OpenStories is a syndication format for distributing Instagram-like stories. To add it to your site, you just need a JSON feed and the <open-stories> custom element. You can see an example in the Gallery. Not viable for the JS-averse.
tools
I currently use Newsboat to check feeds in terminal. Vivaldi also has a nice way of viewing feeds.
resources
The information above is not comprehensive. You can read more details about the formats here: