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RSS Feed Helper Class

When creating the RSS feed for Developer Fusion, I decided to create a simple helper class to generate the XML for me. An example using the class follows.

using System;
using System.Xml;
/// <summary>
/// Enables the generation of an RSS feed
/// </summary>
public class RSSFeedGenerator
{
    XmlTextWriter writer;
    public RSSFeedGenerator( System.IO.Stream stream, System.Text.Encoding encoding )
    {
        writer = new XmlTextWriter(stream, encoding);
        writer.Formatting = Formatting.Indented;
    }
    public RSSFeedGenerator( System.IO.TextWriter w )
    {
        writer = new XmlTextWriter(w);
        writer.Formatting = Formatting.Indented;
    }
    /// <summary>
    /// Writes the beginning of the RSS document
    /// </summary>
    public void WriteStartDocument()
    {
        writer.WriteStartDocument();
        writer.WriteStartElement("rss");
        writer.WriteAttributeString("version","2.0");
    }
    /// <summary>
    /// Writes the end of the RSS document
    /// </summary>
    public void WriteEndDocument()
    {
        writer.WriteEndElement(); //rss
        writer.WriteEndDocument();
    }
    /// <summary>
    /// Closes this stream and the underlying stream
    /// </summary>
    public void Close()
    {
        writer.Flush();
        writer.Close();
    }
    /// <summary>
    /// Begins a new channel in the RSS document
    /// </summary>
    /// <param name="title"></param>
    /// <param name="link"></param>
    /// <param name="description"></param>
    public void WriteStartChannel(string title, string link, string description, string copyright, string webMaster)
    {
        writer.WriteStartElement("channel");
        writer.WriteElementString("title",title);
        writer.WriteElementString("link",link);
        writer.WriteElementString("description",description);
        writer.WriteElementString("language","en-gb");
        writer.WriteElementString("copyright",copyright);
        writer.WriteElementString("generator","Developer Fusion RSS Feed Generator v1.0");
        writer.WriteElementString("webMaster",webMaster);
        writer.WriteElementString("lastBuildDate",DateTime.Now.ToString("r"));
        writer.WriteElementString("ttl","20");
       
    }
    /// <summary>
    /// Writes the end of a channel in the RSS document
    /// </summary>
    public void WriteEndChannel()
    {
        writer.WriteEndElement(); //channel
    }
    /// <summary>
    /// Writes an item to a channel in the RSS document
    /// </summary>
    /// <param name="title"></param>
    /// <param name="link"></param>
    /// <param name="description"></param>
    /// <param name="author"></param>
    /// <param name="publishedDate"></param>
    /// <param name="category"></param>
    public void WriteItem(string title, string link, string description, string author, DateTime publishedDate, string subject)
    {
        writer.WriteStartElement("item");
        writer.WriteElementString("title",title);
        writer.WriteElementString("link",link);
        writer.WriteElementString("description",description);
        writer.WriteElementString("author",author);
        writer.WriteElementString("pubDate",publishedDate.ToString("r"));
        //writer.WriteElementString("category",category);
        writer.WriteElementString("subject",subject);
        writer.WriteEndElement();
    }
}

and then it was *really* simple to generate the RSS feed! :)

// set the content type
Page.Response.ContentType = "text/xml";
// create a RSS feed generator for the output
RSSFeedGenerator gen = new RSSFeedGenerator(Page.Response.Output);
gen.WriteStartDocument();
gen.WriteStartChannel("Developer Fusion RSS Feed",
    "http://www.developerfusion.com/",
    "Summary of the latest articles published on Developer Fusion",
    "Copyright © Developer Fusion Ltd, 1999-2004", "James Crowley" );
// generate the items here
gen.WriteItem("Using ADO.NET with SQL Server",
    "http://www.developerfusion.com/show/4278/",
    "An extensive examination of using ADO.NET to access SQL Server databases, from establishing connections and executing stored procedures, to connection pools, data readers and data sets.",
    "James Crowley", DateTime.Now, ".NET");
// clear up
gen.WriteEndChannel();
gen.WriteEndDocument();
gen.Close();

James first started writing tutorials on Visual Basic in 1999 whilst starting this website (then known as VB Web). Since then, the site has grown rapidly, and James has written numerous tutorials, articles and reviews on VB, PHP, ASP and C#. In October 2003, James formed the company Developer Fusion Ltd, which owns this website, and also offers various development services. In his spare time, he's a 3rd year undergraduate studying Computer Science in the UK. He's also a Visual Basic MVP.

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