Cobwebs Of The Mind: Basics of Blogging Series: Part Twelve

Okay now roll up your sleeves, close the door, take the phone off the hook and get ready. You are going to begin to create an RSS feed. To recap we have on the drawing board:

What you want to go into the feed

Patience

A place to put it up on the net

Patience

A small smattering of technical knowledge

Patience

The very first thing we need to do is understand the makeup of our "rss.xml" file. Well actually the very first thing we need to do is get a template to understand the makeup. We will go from the simple to the more complicated, so don't get stressed.

We will be showing code here. Please bear in mind that blogging software does not lend itself easily to putting down code and thus in the coding sections you will see lots of empty lines. These lines can be erased if you copy and paste. Additionally for viewing I have indented the sections. However you do not need these indents in real code. It just makes it much easier to follow the code flow. Additionally, Firefox and IE interpert the line breaks differently. You will see more empty lines in Firefox. (Without really killing myself with an incredibly amount of extra coding, there is nothing to do about that.)

First point to remember. The template below does NOT include all possible options and/or variations. We will go from simple to complex. And I do not expect anyone to be able to get all the possible permutations at one shot. What we are simply trying to do is explain the layout so you can get the schema into your head and understand the various possibilities.

Of course if you are really into discovering all the techie jargon and possibilities about XML I suggest to start off at: http://www.feedvalidator.org/docs/rss2.html. This will lead you slowly and surely into the possibilities of RSS template creation and all its permutations.

If you are a "techie" or the inner workings of HTML and XML are not a mystery to you, then the template below will be fairly self-explanatory. However, if you are new to the world of XML and especially RSS then it would be a good idea to take the few minutes to study this template and all the explanations.

One of the points to remember is that if you do a Google or Yahoo search for "RSS templates" or something along that line you will come up with a great many articles. Unfortunately, most of those articles are written on a level that demands you have some expertise in these areas. Below I am going to try and explain in "layman" terms what each entry means.

If you know any HTML you will know that HTML is a markup language which demands "tags" to do something. These tags are enclosed in <>. The HTML tags usually (not always) demand an opening and a closing. The opening is <> and the closing is a matching tag with the / added, thus </>. So in order to print bold we would enclose a word or phrase as such. This will be bold. And it will look as follows: This will be bold. (There are a few commands that will Bold depending on the version and sophistication of HTML that you are using). Italics would be: This will be italic.. This will be italic. And combining the two will be: This will be bold and Italic. This will be bold and Italic. The code is in the source code (the viewer obviously does not see the source code!)

(I do not wish to confuse any readers here but certain characters in HTML must be typed out with their own code. It depends on your editor, (whether the editor pre-processes the code and translates it for you). For instance, the < will look like in a pure HTML coded page as "<" and the quotation mark will look like: """. The copyright symbol is produced by typing "©". There are quite a few special codes but today most of the editors do the work by themselves.)

XML has its own markup language. All the commands like HTML are enclosed in <> as you can see below. As in HTML some of them have just opening tags, while most have opening and closing tags. If you do not close a tag then the file has no clue you have moved on to the next level. REMEMBER THAT! Some commands demand that the "command" or "code" be placed between the < opening and the ending > such as the first line in the template:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8">

Other commands demand a beginning and an end marker such as <item> </item>. As in HTML the marker with the / (slash) such as </item> tells XML you are at the end of the entry marked as <item>.

Okay first the Template then we will begin to divide it up.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8">
<?xml-stylesheet type='text/css'>
<rss version="2.0" xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/">

<channel>

<title>" "</title>
<description>" "</description>
<copyright>" "</copyright>
<link>" "</link>
<language>" "</language>
<lastBuildDate>""</lastBuildDate>
<image>

<title>" </title>
<width></width><height></height>
<link></link>
<url></url>

</image>
<item>

<title></title>
<link></link>
<dc:creator></dc:creator>
<pubDate></pubDate>
<description></description>

</item>

</channel>

</rss>

Don't get scared. It really is not as difficult as it looks. Okay now I did promise "layman" terms so here goes. Lets divide this template up into THREE sections.
Section One - Heading XML Section

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<?xml-stylesheet type='text/css' >
<rss version="2.0" xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/">

This section tells the reader/parser/file just what the file is. In effect without too much detail at the moment it announces to the world:
"Hello. I am an XML file and I adhere to the RSS XML template version 2.0 as proposed at http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/."
(Well it means a lot more and a lot less but that is good enough for now.)
Now for the next parts. It is a linear table as usually all logic in computers is. This is not the place to get into arguments of logical systems however we do think in a linear format. So there are two parts.

Define the Channel

Define each item in the channel


What is a Channel? Well lets look on it as how you choose to define the information you are going to put into the file. For instance if you are putting out an RSS file to get people to look at your Web Site which has information about and sells Perfume, your channel would be that. Thus the title would read:

<TITLE>Randy Pandy's Perfumery</TITLE>

As you can see from the template above the channel is defined by the following parameters.

<channel>

<title>" "</title>
<description>" "</description>
<copyright>" "</copyright>
<link>" "</link>
<language>" "</language>
<lastBuildDate>""</lastBuildDate>


(Remember if you look at the bottom of the file you will find the end Channel marker which is of course </channel>.



Now the next level as we drill down is the item (items within the channel).

<item>

<title></title>
<link></link>
<dc:creator></dc:creator>
<pubDate></pubDate>
<description></description>

</item>

Again each item will have a title. The item title here may be:
<TITLE>Seduction - The Perfect Unisex Scent</TITLE>

As you can see the file follows a logical template drilling down from:

XML lines - "Hello World I am an XML file"

Channel - "Hello World. This is my Channel and the overall topic we will be discussing in the Channel." (and all the info you want to give on it.)

Item - "Hello World. I am an item in the above channel. Here is my information, my pictures, my source and where you can find me."

And remember at the end you will need the closing for both Channel and RSS:
</channel>
</rss>

If you are an author or writer think of it like this:

XML Lines describe the genre - Say "Hello World This is a book on fantasy"

Channel Line describes the book - Say "Hello World this is a book whose title is "Randy Pandy's Perfumery"

Item Lines describe each chapter - "Hello World this is a chapter "Seduction - The Perfect Unisex Scent"

Don't get worried yet. I am not going to leave you high and dry. In my next article I will teach you how to fill out each item in the Channel and Item declarations. When we are done with that, you should be able to create a fairly decent XML file and template.

Previous Articles In This Series: