Comments on: RSS vs. Atom: What’s the Big Deal?

By: Bill Konrad

Bill Konrad — Sun, 08 Mar 2009 10:51:55 +0000

Both Atom and RSS 2.0 have their merits. That said, I saw some serious frustration out there where people couldn’t successfully convert between Atom and RSS. So, I created a free service to do it. And as long as the hosting doesn’t kill me, I’ll keep it running.

Enjoy!

Convert Atom to RSS at:

http://devtacular.com/utilities/atomtorss/

By: iwonder

iwonder — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 14:24:41 +0000

Aaron, I realize this post is a bit old, but wanted to comment about your ‘last updated’ notion. While it is true that there is no required date field in RSS v2.0, that’s more of an issue with newfeed generation than with the actual spec. RSS v2.0, like RSSv0.91 has an optional pubDate field that can be included in any generated newsfeed for syndication.

There are other custom elements that can be used, as well, with the inclusion of custom namespaces, which allow RSSv2.0 great flexibility.

The problem with RSSv2.0 is similar to ATOM – developers of newsfeed generators mostly do not always adhere to the specs, and do not take full advantage of the rich features enabled in each.

Personally, I find both about equal in terms of working with them for consuming feeds. To eliminate as much trouble as possible, I always inspect the incoming content to familiarize myself with it. I will say that the RSS pubDate element has its’ shortcomings in terms of the date formatting, it’s a bit more involved to develop sorting and localization routines than the Atom date fields, but using custom namespaces allows a workaround. However, this approach is not always used by those who syndicate their content.

While we can argue the merits of RSS vs Atom feeds, I think the better discussion is how to ensure that developers and syndicators follow the specs to allow smoother integration of syndicated content.

By: Coder

Coder — Thu, 01 Nov 2007 07:55:33 +0000

I never heard about Atom before, i like many other people assumed RSS was the only way to feed information to others. Atom does sounds like it has more advantages, i will look into this, thank you for sharing this information.

By: RedMan blog » أرشيف » الفروقات بين الـ Rss و الـ Atom

RedMan blog » أرشيف » الفروقات بين الـ Rss و الـ Atom — Mon, 28 May 2007 14:16:18 +0000

[...] روابط ذات صلة : RSS and Atom RSS vs Atom, you know, for dummies RSS vs. Atom: What’s the Big Deal [...]

By: MJR's slef-reflection

MJR's slef-reflection — Wed, 17 May 2006 11:50:56 +0000

The “Money-making Spamming RSS Tips Legal Podcast Blooper Flame Tags” Update

Today I continue my backlog-clearing series of link lists with ones about blogging and podcasting, including style, technicalities and legalities. If you blog or podcast and want to learn from others, I hope you’ll enjoy some of these:…

By: Supa

Supa — Thu, 30 Mar 2006 07:49:18 +0000

Thanks for the heads up Aaron. What MJ Ray says is also very interesting on the RSS convertion tool. Since my Wordpress blogs come with RSS2 I’m tempted to say I’ll stick with that, but having a Feedburner overview of how many people are following your blog is also interesting.

I see a lot of confusion if the different types of feeds are compatible or not in different types of readers, at least I certainly don’t get it.

By: Marco

Marco — Wed, 29 Mar 2006 21:40:13 +0000

So that means it’s better to bookmark the sites I read with Atom 1.0 feeds than with RSS 2.0?

By: A.H

A.H — Wed, 29 Mar 2006 17:42:48 +0000

I’ve always wondered what’s the difference between those two, too bad i use RSS 2.0 for all of my blogs, but oh well =)

Thanks for making things clear Aaron!

A.H

By: MJ Ray

MJ Ray — Wed, 29 Mar 2006 17:21:06 +0000

I’ve been having problems on my aggregator with feedburner producing stuff that’s actually a jumble of RDF Site Summary (RSS 1, the real thing) and Really Simple Syndication (RSS 2, Dave Winer’s cheap spoiler). Anyone else noticed that?

RSS 1 addresses a lot of the criticisms of RSS 2 made in the article above, including allowing XML item content and full Dublin Core metadata.

I wish RSS 1 would win, but there’s some compatibility between it and Atom, so Atom’s not a bad compromise. It has developed some problems recently, including most feeds having unnecessary content in them and the Atom spec being published under a restrictive copyright licence by IETF.

So, for now, I’ll be using tricks like http://cavedoni.com/2004/02/atom03rss1.xsl to convert Atom to RSS 1 and feed it to my existing aggregation tools.

By: Aaron Brazell

Aaron Brazell — Wed, 29 Mar 2006 15:27:56 +0000

I think Feedburner provides RSS 1.0 feeds. It will accept any feed (minus Atom 0.3) but it presents RSS 1.0.

By: Supa

Supa — Wed, 29 Mar 2006 15:22:33 +0000

Is FeedBurner both RSS2 & Atom (and the 7 other RSS types) covered in one feed? I’m thinking of using the FeedBurner Plugin for WordPress. Or maybe I’m comparing apples & oranges?

By: Jennie

Jennie — Wed, 29 Mar 2006 13:38:04 +0000

Blogcharm uses a really unusual php version. I have found little compatibility for it on its own but parsing it through feedburner has really helped me.

By: Andy Merrett

Andy Merrett — Wed, 29 Mar 2006 13:09:48 +0000

I am likely to have to invest in an Atom parser as well as an RSS one, as I aggregate a lot of content on BFN, and at present don’t pick up Atom feeds. Having two formats makes it slightly more of a pain from a developers point of view, but there ya go, standards eh?