How can I get started making a C# RSS Reader?

Question

I have been wanting to make a RSS reader for a while now (just for fun), but I don\'t have the slightest idea of where to start. I don\'t understand anything about RSS. Are

Answer 1

RSS itself is really simple. Just an XML description of a channel, and a list of items on that channel (possibly with files attached to each item). Keeping track of updates is a little tricky, and managing encodings and post times/dates is tricky too though. The real nightmare is all the different "interpretations" of the RSS format that different sites use. If you're really writing a feed reader, you might want to start with parsing Atom, as it's a more standardised format, and might get you further faster, with a good design to branch off into RSS from. But really, you should just use an RSS parsing library -- preferably the most compatible one available (but don't pay for an RSS library; they're common enough).

Answer 2

I suggest you use this

RSS.NET is an open-source .NET class library for RSS feeds. It provides a reusable object model for parsing and writing RSS feeds. It is fully compatible with RSS versions 0.90, 0.91, 0.92, and 2.0.1, implementing all constructs.

Since standard syndication feed does not support other versions of rss.

Answer 3

You need to work with the RSS XML specification: http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/rss/rss.html

Answer 4

If you write a full featured reader without using any library, also think that there are ATOM feeds to parse.

Answer 5

I've been working with RSS quite a bit and have found that ATOM feeds are typically easier to parse using the RssSyndication class. For RSS 2.0 specifications, if the feed is in fact valid, then it's just as easy to load an XDocument from the URI, and parse the data as needed.

Answer 6

See

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb943474.aspx

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.servicemodel.syndication.syndicationfeed.aspx

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb943480.aspx

Basically there is a lot of stuff in the .Net 3.5 framework that does the grunt-work of parsing and representing feeds; it's not hard to write a 30-line app that takes in a feed URL and downloads the feed and prints the title and author of all the items, for example. (Works for RSS 2.0 (not others!) or Atom.)