RSS and Atom feeds

RSS stands for Rich Site Summary. It is used to publish frequently updated information. Users need standalone special software applications or browser add-ons called RSS readers to read information from any feeds.

Feed documents contain summarized or full text, metadata, publishing date, author name, and so on. Using feed, users can receive timely website updates or aggregate data from many websites. User need not check manually for any updates from those websites frequently, but subscribe for feeds. Feed reader checks the subscribed website frequently for any new data and retrieves them.

Skeleton of a RSS feed document

An example of a RSS feed document is listed here:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<rss version="2.0">
  <channel>
    <title>Title of the channel</title>
    <description>A brief description of the channel</description>
    <language>en-US</language>
    <item>
      <title>Item title...