This will show you how to create a RSS feed that the Feed Validator Show archive.org snapshot considers valid.
Note that RSS is a poorly specified format. Consider using the Atom builder Show archive.org snapshot to make an Atom feed instead. Write a note here if you do.
- Controller
Create a FeedsController to host the RSS feed. Such a controller is also useful to host other data feeds that tend to gather over the lifetime of an application, e.g. sitemap.xml.:
class FeedsController < ApplicationController
layout false
def rss
@notes = Note.all(:order => 'created_at DESC', :limit => 50)
end
end
- Routes
Connect a route to the feed in config/routes.rb:
map.feed 'feed.rss', :controller => 'feeds', :action => 'rss', :format => 'rss'
- View
Create a view in views/feeds/rss.rss.builder [sic]. Prefer the builder to using Haml because XML schemas can be strict about whitespace, whereas Haml is not.
xml.instruct!
xml.rss :version => '2.0', 'xmlns:atom' => 'http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom' do
xml.channel do
xml.title 'Feed title'
xml.description 'Feed description'
xml.link root_url
xml.language 'en'
xml.tag! 'atom:link', :rel => 'self', :type => 'application/rss+xml', :href => feed_url
for note in @notes
xml.item do
xml.title note.title
xml.link note_url(note)
xml.pubDate(note.created_at.rfc2822)
xml.guid note.guid
xml.description(h(note.body))
end
end
end
end
- Layout
Add a link to the <head> of your layout so the feed can be auto-discovered by browsers:
%html
%head
%link{ :href => feed_url, :rel => "alternate", :type => "application/rss+xml", :title => "RSS feed" }
