O'Reilly's Short Cut book, How to Build an RSS Feed, is a nice short guide (46 pages) to the world of RSS. Author Mark Woodman has done an excellent job of providing a quick read, filled with RSS basics, for the beginner RSS learner. The book was well structured, with diagrams and easy to follow code examples. Links to additional references are scattered throughout the short book for those readers who want more detail about RSS guidelines or, as the book says "if you want to dig deeper".
The book begins with an explanation of how RSS works, gives a quick description of how an RSS feed is created, anatomy of an RSS feed, and then gets into the details of RSS best practices and how to build RSS in code. Woodman provides step-by-step instructions for a simple RSS feed, explaining the RSS channel, required elements, and the optional elements that can be included in an RSS feed. Beginners could stop at this point and come away with a basic RSS feed to implement on their sites.
However, for those readers who want to know more, the book has sample PHP and Java code for writing RSS feeds. The chapter on RSS modules and extensions discusses the Dublin Core, CommentAPI, and the Geo extension briefly. Personally, I would have liked more explanation and details on the extensions and modules. The last chapter is a short list of the many high profile websites using RSS, including WordPress, MSN, CNET, eBay, Amber Alerts, and many others.
In all, the book was concise and easy to understand. I would highly recommend it for beginners who need to know the basics to quickly add an RSS feed for their website.
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