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Issue 4.1

COLUMN

RSS Reader

The next RSS reader from start to finish.

Issue: 4.1 (September/October 2005)
Author: Will Leshner
Author Bio: Will Leshner has spent a good deal of the last several years having a blast building REALbasic applications, utilities, and plugins. His REALbasic accomplishments include KidzMail, KidzLog, and SQLiteManager. You can also check out his REALbasic weblog at http://www.rbgazette.com/.
Article Description: No description available.
Article Length (in bytes): 12,224
Starting Page Number: 38
Article Number: 4118
Related Web Link(s):

http://www.rbgazette.com/
http://rbgazette.com<
http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RSS_
http://bloglines.com
http://www.apple.com/macosx/features/safari/
http://allrss.com/rssreaders.html

Excerpt of article text...

Introduction

Believe it or not, it is time to begin a new From Scratch project, and the project I have decided on is an RSS reader. An RSS reader will let us explore several interesting themes, including using the XML classes to parse RSS, using REALbasic 2005's new ContainerControl to create resizable panes in a window, and the use of the new HTMLViewer control. I've got a few other topics I hope to cover as well. In this article I'll talk a bit about what RSS is and why you'd want an RSS with a reader. Then I'll jump into the project itself by describing the reader we will be building. Finally, I'll lay out a roadmap of where we will go in future articles.

What is RSS?

RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication. It is an XML format used to syndicate changes to a website. There are actually several different RSS formats, but I'm going to ignore the ugly details for this project and concentrate exclusively on the RSS 2.0 specification. If you want to know all the gory details of the contentious history of RSS and the various competing formats that call themselves RSS, check out the links at the end of this article.

There isn't anything magic about RSS. It is just a file of XML that lives together with the other files that make up a website. Any web client that can speak HTTP can ask a web server for a website's RSS file. The best way to read the RSS files of syndicated websites is with an RSS reader. An RSS reader is really just a specialized web client that knows specifically how to deal with RSS. I'll have more to say about RSS readers shortly.

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