Consuming RSS Feeds

In this recipe, we will learn how to consume RSS feeds. RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feeds are published by many news agencies and informational websites such as CNN. RSS/ATOM is also used extensively in publishing blogs. RSS is based on XML format.

Getting ready

Let's try to check what is published at a CNN feed first. There are many feeds available at CNN. We will use one feed that returns the Top Stories. Check the following URL: http://rss.cnn.com/rss/cnn_topstories.rss. You should get content similar to that shown in the following screenshot, which contains the name of the top story with a link, posted date, and short description:

The following is the partial XML feed :

<?xml-stylesheet type="text/xsl" media="screen" href="/~d/styles/rss2full.xsl"?>
<?xml-stylesheet type="text/css" media="screen" href="http://rss.cnn.com/~d/styles/itemcontent.css"?>
<rss xmlns:media="http://search.yahoo.com/mrss/" xmlns:feedburner="http://rssnamespace.org/feedburner...