Required Elements - XML

Table 2.

Simple RSS Document Structure:

Let's look at an example of a "Simple"RSS Document:

<?xml version="1.0" ?>
<rss version="0.91">
  <channel>
    <title>RSS Tutorial </title>
    <link>http://www.linktothestory.com</link>
    <description> The RSS Tutorial</description>

    <item>
      <title>RSS Syndication </title>
      <link>http://www.linktothestory.com</link>
      <description>Blah,Blah...</description>
    </item>

    <item>
      <title>Technology in Crisis??</title>
      <link>http://www.linktothestory.com</link>
      <description>The problem with technology in Schools</description>
    </item>

  </channel>
</rss>

As you can see all RSS Documents start with a "<?xml version?>" tag and end with a "</rss>" tag. This is also where you include the encoding type of the document. Without the <rss> tags, this will just be a bog standard, XML document. Immediately after the opening RSS tag, the channel is opened by the <channel> tag, after which a title, link and a description of your channel content is given. All of the elements are required; if even one of these elements is missing, your document will not pass a validator's test and most RSS readers will not be able to parse your content. Table 2 describes the three individual tags that comes immediately after the opening channel tag.

Now the <item> tags are at the heart of the document. They contain the link, title, and description fields that describe your news stories or articles that you want the world to know about. This is what every RSS reader will be looking for when it reads your document. An item is a story or headline (it can be anything you want really) that contains a Title and link to the story and a description of the story itself.