Chapter 3: Consuming Web Feeds

Overview

The programs that can use or "consume" a web feed are almost as numerous as the sites that provide the feeds themselves. Because the entire feed structure was designed to be easy to read and utilize, many different types of software have added feed capability to their feature set. You can take a look at software such as Trillian (Instant Messenger) at www.ceruleanstudios.com/learn/ or Mozilla Firefox (web browser) at www.mozilla.org/products/firefox/ to get a feel for what's out there.

Having seen how basic feeds are put together, and the role XML plays in delivering the feeds and their information, you probably want to dive into building your own aggregator. That's exactly what you are going to do now. Along with consuming your first feed, you also learn the following topics:

• Feed consumption in detail

• Feed structure in detail

• Making your feeds even more secure

• Images in feeds

• Dealing with broken HTML from feeds

• Recording feeds

Of course, consuming feeds is only one side of the coin. Chapter 5 discusses how you go about building your own feed, but for now, get familiar with making use of what is already out there.