Subject: Nested Feeds...

From: Blaine Garrett <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 25 Jul 2005 16:53:03 -0500

Hi all,

I just found this list... hopefully it is the correct list to post this to.

I am developing a CMS where "modules" are data oriented and thus the output of a
module is xml. At first I was just tossing together arbitrary tags, but then
started to want something more defined (like atom or rss). After making the
switch to a more structured output, things worked great and were more
consistant.

However, now I am running into the problem where modules, because they are so
data oriented, may have child applications. Think forums have forums messages
or news articles have comments. This lends itself to sub feeds.

>From my searching, in the name of simplicity, RSS and ATOM reject the idea of
nested channels/feeds. I have skimmed opml and ocs standards, but neither seem
to be as widly used and modernized as atom. Is it still the case that Atom does
not allow nested feeds and if so, are there any plans to change this? Atom seems
like it is more extensible than most others, so I am suprised that something
like this would not be allowed. I have read the potential horrors of a "feed of
feeds", but it seems like that should be a limiting case.

I really want to move to atom, but it seems I might just have to switch back to
non-atom valid arbitrary xml.

--
Blaine Garrett
Chief Web Applications Developer
JR Computer Associates INC
http://jrcorps.com
[email-masked]

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From: Eric Scheid <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 26 Jul 2005 11:42:56 +1000

On 26/7/05 7:53 AM, "Blaine Garrett" <[email-masked]> wrote:

> nested channels/feeds.

Not at all in the case of Atom. An entry can contain one or more <link>
elements, and these link elements would point to various resources ..
including more atom feeds. Atom even includes an attribute ('rel') to
designate the relationship between the entry and the linked resource, and
there have been proposals for rel="comments" and more.

Atom also specifies an attribute ('type') to declare the mime type of the
linked resource, so a reader can ascertain (without fetching) that the
linked resource is another Atom feed, and not an HTML page (for eg.)

> I have skimmed opml and ocs standards, but neither seem
> to be as widly used and modernized as atom. Is it still the case that Atom
> does not allow nested feeds and if so, are there any plans to change this?

A gargantuan all-in-one document would be horrible. Multiple feeds connected
together with <link> is another thing altogether (and totally possible)

e.

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From: "A. Pagaltzis" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 26 Jul 2005 06:30:20 +0200

* Eric Scheid <[email-masked]> [2005-07-26 03:55]:
> A gargantuan all-in-one document would be horrible. Multiple
> feeds connected together with <link> is another thing
> altogether (and totally possible)

Another possibility is a *flat* all-in-one document where entries
crossreference each other using their "atom:id"s, signifying
which entries belong to which others – like what we’re talking
about for comments in feeds.

Regards,
-- 
Aristotle Pagaltzis // <http://plasmasturm.org/>