Entry Elements

Each individual entry at a site has its own entry within the feed, up to the number designated for each feed (this number does change, but usually ends up being between 5 and 15). In Atom, the entries are designated by entry elements, while in RSS 1.x and RSS 2.0, they're listed as item.

Examining the more comment elements within each entry:

title

The entry's title, if any.

link

The link or URL for the individual item.

guid

The unique identification of the item. In Atom, this is id.

description

In RSS 1.1 and RSS 2.0, the description is a text description or summary of the item. In Atom, the field for this value is summary.

content

The content is the encoded full content for the item, including any HTML or XHTML markup. The field could also be called content:encoded with RSS 1.x. If you specify both content and description, then the description (or summary) should be an abbreviated copy of the text. If you specify just the summary or description, and don't want to provide full content, you should not include the content field.

author

Author of item in Atom. This is dc:creator in RSS 1.x and RSS 2.0.

pubDate

Publication date of item. This is issued in Atom and dc:date in RSS 1.x.

category

The category of the item.

Examples of entries from all three feed types follow. First, Atom:

   <entry>   <title>The WebKit Open Source Project</title>   <link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/   oreilly/radar/atom?m=520" />   <id>http://webkit.opendarwin.org/</id>   <created>2005-10-13T08:34:02Z</created>   <modified>2005-07-03T09:06:11Z</modified>   <author>   <name>rael</name>   </author>   <dc:subject>apple</dc:subject>   <dc:subject>browser</dc:subject>   <dc:subject>affordances</dc:subject>   <dc:subject>web</dc:subject>   <dc:subject>etech</dc:subject>   <dc:subject>etech06</dc:subject>   <dc:subject>safari</dc:subject>   <summary type="text/html" mode="escaped">By rael   WebKit, the embeddable Web browser behind Mac OS X's Safari, Mail.app,   Dashboard, and third party apps like NetNewsWire and TextMate, now makes   nightly builds available....</summary>   <content type="text/html" mode="escaped" xml:lang="en" xml:base="http://radar.   oreilly.com/">By rael   WebKit, the embeddable Web browser behind Mac OS X's Safari, Mail.app,   Dashboard, and third party apps like NetNewsWire and TextMate, now makes   nightly builds available....   <img src="/books/4/325/1/html/2/http://feeds.feedburner.com/oreilly/radar/atom?g=520"/></   content>   <feedburner:origLink>http://webkit.opendarwin.org/</feedburner:origLink>   </entry> 

Next, RSS 1.0:

   <item rdf:about="http://webkit.opendarwin.org/">   <title>The WebKit Open Source Project</title>   <link>http://feeds.feedburner.com/oreilly/radar/rss10?m=520</link>   <description>By rael   WebKit, the embeddable Web browser behind Mac OS X's Safari, Mail.app,   Dashboard, and third party apps like NetNewsWire and TextMate, now makes   nightly builds available....&lt;img src="/books/4/325/1/html/2/http://feeds.feedburner.com/oreilly/   radar/rss10?g=520"/&gt;>/description<   <dc:subject>apple browser affordances web etech etech06 safari</dc:subject>   <dc:date>2005-10-13T08:34:02-08:00</dc:date>   <feedburner:origLink>http://webkit.opendarwin.org/</feedburner:origLink>   </item> 

And finally, RSS 2.0:

   <item>   <description>  Blog Herald: <a href="http://www.blogherald.com/2005/03/06/a-short-history-of blogging/">   A short history of blogging</a>.   </description>   <pubDate>Thu, 13 Oct 2005 05:46:28 GMT</pubDate>   <guid>   http://archive.scripting.com/2005/10/13#When:1:46:28AM   </guid>   </item> 

There are other elements, optional for each feed, but these are the most commonly used fields for most feeds, unless you're audio broadcasting or podcasting, which we'll get into later in the document. Normally you don't have to worry about creating the feed, as whatever publishing or syndication feed tools you use will manage this for you. However, if you do want to ensure your syndication feed is working properly, you can validate it at the Feed Validator, found at feedvalidator.org.