[Web4lib] RSS feeds

[Jonathan Gorman]

> I recently read somewhere that you can use Javascript to set up RSS feeds
> from your website.

This might be possible, but I must admit a bit of skepticism.  If you're 
talking about creating a feed, JavaScript's a poor choice.  After all, a 
feed is a seperate xml document.  You would need to be able to change the 
headers to reflect this.

Or are you talking about incorporating a RSS feed (ie a JavaScript RSS 
Reader) into a website?  In that case, AJAX (JavaScript-based) would be 
one way to do it, but probably painful due to some of RSS's quirks.

My guess is the various "JavaScript" services actually don't use 
JavaScript for the parsing of the information.  Rather, they have scripts 
running that take in the RSS feed and create some JavaScript that inserts 
the process text.  It then returns that whenever the url is requested. 
One could have the scripts returning html or formatted pages as well.  I 
believe that is how services like Feed2JS work 
http://jade.mcli.dist.maricopa.edu/feed/.  (PHP-based I believe.  Last I 
checked they offered a version for download).

Some other script based solutions: Magpie 
http://magpierss.sourceforge.net/, rss2html.php (saw some references to 
it, probably a couple of php scripts out there with the same name), and 
FeedRollPro (saw references, not sure how useful).

Jonathan T. Gorman
Visiting Research Information Specialist
University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana
216 Main Library - MC522
1408 West Gregory Drive
Urbana, IL 61801
Phone: (217) 244-4688