Related link: http://www.xml.com/pub/a/2006/02/22/rome-parse-publish-rss-atom-feeds-java.html
Mark Woodman writes a great piece about ROME for XML.com titled “ROME in a Day: Parse and Publish Feeds in Java”. I’ve used ROME in a few applications that called for syndication, it’s a really simple way to generate RSS from a Java app.
Seems more work that needed
Maybe I'm old fashioned, but this seems like a lot more code to create an RSS feed that just using JDOM. I thought a library was supposed to help, not be extra work.
Have fun reinventing the wheel...
sure, you *could* write your own RSS feed using JDOM, but good luck maintaining compatibility with:
* RSS 0.90
* RSS 0.91 Netscape
* RSS 0.91 Userland
* RSS 0.92
* RSS 0.93
* RSS 0.94
* RSS 1.0
* RSS 2.0
* Atom 0.3
* Atom 1.0
Easy, right? E-A-S-Y. So, once you are done righting your totally straightfoward JDOM code to support these different standards, then let's start talking about consuming namespace specific extensions. Like the Google Base, iTunes, Creative Commons, and Slash namespaces.
You are right, all that would be really easy to program with JDOM, thanks for the heads up.
Have fun reinventing the wheel...
Now that was a bit arrogant and completely uncalled for.
The original poster is quite correct that it is easy enough to create an RSS feed in JDOM (at least RSS 0.92 and 2.0). Using an external library to create what is a very simple format is overkill.
How many people need to distribute more than one variety of the same feed anyway? This might be a good example of where ROME would be useful, but in most simple cases, JDOM is sufficient.
Now, using a library to read other people's feeds (and formats) is a different story, and one where I welcome libraries like ROME.
Have fun reinventing the wheel...
Totally arrogant, wasn't it? :-) But, completely warranted...
"How many people need to distribute more than one variety of the same feed anyway? This might be a good example of where ROME would be useful, but in most simple cases, JDOM is sufficient."
Many. The blog you just read does. Why is it warranted? Because there is this idea in vouge now that "reuse is overrated". It's done, even if it is simple (especially because it is simple), you shouldn't be reinventing the wheel. (See the one hundred thousand reimplementations of commons lang as proof).
Here's where this idea gets you: "Note to readers, this blog only publishes RSS 1.0 because I thought that RSS was too simple to use a library like ROME. In fact, I'm too proud to use a library for something as simple as RSS. Instead, I'm using some custom JDOM code which is neither well tested nor easily upgradeable to newer versions. If you are looking for an ATOM feed or an RSS 2.0 feed, I'm sorry, you are out of luck."
Re:
The reality is that people should use RSS 1.1 if they have a need for RDF and Atom 1.0 otherwise, and forget all the broken legacy formats of the past… :-)