Palliative Care Matters

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  • What is RSS?

    An RSS news feed is designed to provide time-sensitive headlines and summaries of content with links to more detail elsewhere. RSS is an XML specification that web sites can use to distribute and aggregate Web content. This lets web sites work together to share content between sites and directly with end users. RSS is an acronym for Rich Site Summary, but some people call it Really Simple Syndication.

    RSS news feed files are collections of short items featuring 'headlines' and brief summaries of content that can be read in more detail somewhere else on the Internet if the person wants the details. Although RSS was designed for news stories, any content can be shared in this way.

    There are several different versions of the RSS specification and support for some RSS features is not yet fully standardized. This site uses the RSS 2.0 specification. That is the most current version of the RSS standard, now used by the NHS National Electronic Library of Health, Microsoft, Yahoo, and other major players. RSS is specified as a type of XML service. Because RSS is a flavor of XML, all RSS files also must conform to the XML 1.0 specification, available at the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) website.

  • What RSS feeds are available on Palliative Care Matters?

    There are a number of pre-configured RSS feeds:
    • News - News items posted at the Palliative Care Matters website
    • Media headlines - News items selected from the world media of relevance to palliative care
    • Other Medical news - Other medical News items of relevance to palliative care
    • Books - Books from the Palliative Care Matters book database

    Click on the link(s) above to preview the content. (RSS files are displayed here using an XSL stylesheet to format the appearance. If you want to see the source RSS/XML file, go to View Source in your browser.)
    NB The content will not display if you are using Internet Explorer 5.5 or earlier. However the RSS feed is still working, and should function in a news aggregator/RSS reader on your computer.

    The content can in many cases be further customised by selecting various options. Use the configurator (wizard) to help you develop your own custom feed.

  • How do I use RSS?

    RSS XML files are read by a special type of software that may be called an RSS news reader, news aggregator, or Weblog utility. If you have an RSS news reader or Weblog utility program, to add the Palliative Care Matters Feed to your subscriptions you just paste a link into your subscription feed list. When the content of that feed changes, your software will let you know. This use of an RSS feed gives you an alternative to electronic mail to receive updates from information providers you select. It seems likely that in the near future reading your RSS news feeds will become as much a part of your daily ritual as reading your email.

    If you operate a web site you can display an RSS feed as HTML content on your own pages, giving you access to co-branded features from many sources.

  • What RSS Readers are available?

    There are many choices, but one good free one for Windows is the Awasu News Reader
    The Yahoo! Directory contains a list of some of the most popular aggregators, as does the Google Directory, About.com and Backend.Userland.com.
    For those unable to download and install software, MyWireService and Bloglines provide news aggregator services that can be accessed through normal web browsers.

  • How do I access an RSS news feed with my news reader?

    Right-click on any of the preconfigured links above and copy the URL (shortcut) to add your feed to a news aggregator/RSS reader. You can optionally remove the &xsl=1.

  • Can I control how an RSS feed looks when I display it on my own web site?

    Yes. Since RSS is based on XML, it contains only the data and no formatting instructions. The way it looks when you use it on your web site is up to you.

  • Where can I find parsing code to import an RSS feed into my own website using ASP, .NET, JSP, Javascript, PHP, Cold Fusion etc?

    RSS parsers are available for all of the major development environments. A Google search can help you find free parser examples for all the major scripting languages. You should also check directly with the vendor web site for your technology; RSS code samples usually can be found in the technical support service for all of the major brands.

  • Who else uses RSS?

    Many large news organisations and weblogs offer RSS feeds.
    The Syndic8 project has compiled a comprehensive list of feeds from around the web.

  • What is the difference between RSS and XML?

    RSS is a dialect of XML (eXtensible Markup Language). RSS uses the XML language to separate out each headline or item in a file so that news readers can display them individually.

  • What is OPML?

    You might have seen icon: OPML icons on some pages.
    Outline Processor Markup Language (OPML) is a dialect of XML for describing data-structures.
    It can be used to list a directory of RSS feeds. Some news readers allow you to import several RSS feeds at a time just by telling them the location of an OPML directory.

  • Where can I find out more about RSS and its usage?




RSS 2.0 XML

Below is some technical information about the RSS channel as used on Palliative Care Matters
View sample files for: RSS 2.0 formatted with XSL, and RSS 2.0 raw.


RSS channel elements

Here's a list of the channel elements included in the RSS feed, each with a brief description and an example.

Element Description Example
title The name of the channel. Palliative Care Matters
link The URL to the HTML website corresponding to the channel. http://www.pallcare.info/
description       Phrase or sentence describing the channel. The latest News from Palliative Care Matters.
language The language the channel is written in. en-GB
managingEditor Email address for person responsible for editorial content. admin@pallcare.info
webMaster Email address for person responsible for technical issues relating to channel. admin@pallcare.info
lastBuildDate The last time the content of the channel changed.  All date-times in RSS conform to the Date and Time Specification of RFC 822, with the year expressed with four characters. Sat, 07 Sep 2003 09:42:31 GMT
pubDate The publication date for the content in the channel. This is the same as lastBuildDate Sat, 07 Sep 2003 09:42:31 GMT
category Specifies one or more categories that the channel belongs to. <category>Palliative Care</category>
docs A URL that points to the documentation for the format used in the RSS file. http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss
ttl ttl stands for time to live. It's a number of minutes that indicates how long a channel can be cached before refreshing from the source. <ttl>60</ttl>
image Specifies an image that can be displayed with the channel. More info below.

<image> sub-element of <channel>

<image> is a sub-element of <channel>, and contains the following sub-elements.

<url> is the URL of the GIF, JPEG or PNG image that represents the channel.

<title> describes the image, it's used in the ALT attribute of the HTML <img> tag when the channel is rendered in HTML.

<link> is the URL of the website.
(Note, the image <title> and <link> have the same value as the channel's <title> and <link>.)

<width> and <height> indicate the width and height of the image in pixels.


Elements of <item>

A channel can contain any number of <item>s. An RSS item may represent anything - an article, event, or book etc.


Element Description Example
title The title of the item. #hpmglobal tweetchat @Twitter
description     The item synopsis. Monday April 2nd saw the first weekly #hpmglobal tweetchat. The world of social media is having...
link The URL of the item. Where possible, this should point to the original source of the item. http://www.pallcare.info/article.php?sid=114
guid URL of the item at Palliative Care Matters. <guid isPermaLink="true">
http://www.pallcare.info/article.php?sid=114
</guid>
pubDate Indicates when the item was published. (NB for some items, this is the date that the items were included on the database, rather than the date the original item was published.) Sun, 19 May 2002 15:21:36 GMT
author Email address of the author of an item.
category Includes the item in one or more categories.
source The RSS channel or website that the item came from (if appropriate). The attribute url gives the link to the RSS site.
<source url="http://www.originalsource.com/rss/">Original Web Site</source>

Additional (optional) Elements of <item>

Some channels may also contains elements defined by the Dublin Core Metadata Element Set, Version 1.1. These include:

Element Description / Examples
dc:title Same as <title>
dc:source May be same as <description>, or can be used for e.g. Publisher of books.
dc:date The same as <pubDate> but formatted as YYYY-MM-DD or YYYY-MM.
e.g. 2004-05-05 or 2004-05
dc:identifier Used with the attribute type, this contains a unique identifier e.g. PubMed database of the National Library of Medicine for articles, ISBN for books
e.g. <dc:identifier type="PubMedID">15120769</dc:identifier>
e.g. <dc:identifier type="ISBN">0198742536</dc:identifier>
dc:creator Authors of the item.


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These pages have been tested in Internet Explorer 5.5/6.0 and Netscape 7. Javascript must be enabled. Some elements may not work correctly in other browser(s) or on older versions. Note that the formatted RSS pages will not display correctly on IE 5.5.