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Figure 7-1

Atom was created because of the standards issues that have plagued RSS over time. It was born in 2003.

There are two versions, Atom 0.3 and Atom 1.0. It is far more standardized but also more complicated

and less commonly used. It has recently been gaining ground, however. For a more detailed comparison

of RSS and Atom, consult

http://www.intertwingly.net/wiki/pie/Rss20AndAtom10Compared

.

We are ambivalent about which standard is employed. RSS 2.0 does have a higher adoption rate, it is

simpler by most metrics, and that is the format demonstrated here when you create a web feed. To syn-

dicate feeds, however, you will employ the use of a PHP library called SimplePie, which reads

all

ver-

sions of RSS and Atom feeds transparently.

A typical RSS 2.0 feed might look like this:

<rss version=”2.0”>

<channel>

<title>example.com breaking news</title>

<link>http://www.example.org</link>

<description>A short description of this feed</description>

<language>en</language>

<pubDate>Tue, 12 Sep 2006 07:56:23 EDT</pubDate>

<item>

<title>Catchy Title</title>

<link>http://www.example.org/catchy-title.html</link>

<description>

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Chapter 7: Web Feeds and Social Bookmarking

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