RSS 2.0

Most of this section on RSS 2.0, with the exception of the RSS Specification¹ itself, is not a normative reference, spelling out all of the various ways that RSS feeds can be created in compliance with the specification. Instead it takes a simpler, best practices approach to RSS feed development. This makes it a good starting point to learn the RSS feed format as well as a good quick reference to come back to when necessary. If it becomes necessary to deviate from the code and examples here then please consult the original specification.

Limitations of RSS 2.0

• The RSS elements themselves have no namespace, which makes it difficult to aggregate feed content with content in other namespaces.
• A separate file must be created for each channel. Many sites have more than one channel, such as both a blog channel and a podcast channel. To create an app that is driven by feed content, an OPML document with the list of channels must be created and parsed by the app, rather than simply adding additional channels, which the app already knows how to parse.

Footnotes

1) The original specification RSS 2.0 at Harvard Law is available under the Creative Commons Attribution / Share Alike license (version 1.0). Under the "Share Alike" provision of that license, there is a zip archive, in HTML 5 code with line breaks converted to Unix ^J (0x0a) characters, available to download from this site, and since it's licensed under the same Creative Commons license as the original RSS specification from which it was derived, you are free to modify it, as long as you license it on the same terms as which it was licensed to you, and give proper attribution credit. The HTML documents in the original zip archive of the RSS Specification were written using HTML 4.01 Transitional DOCTYPE and the line breaks were ^M (0x0d) characters.