Introduction

This handbook is a resource for people who want to understand what feeds are, how they can be used/consumed, and popular feed formats.

What is a feed?

A text file that contains content in a defined format that can be read/displayed/consumed by other applications (feed readers/aggregators).

Why have a feed?

Feed reader applications can monitor multiple feeds and inform the user when a feed or feeds have been updated. If a user follows many feeds, this kind of application saves the time of going to those websites to find new content.

Feeds are typically constructed in a reverse-chronological order (newest items are at the beginning of the file). If a feed is loaded into a feed reader, the reader would display the most recent item first, followed by earlier items. There are multiple user interfaces within the community of feed readers. Some readers display feeds separate from each other, while some can integrate a set of feeds into a single stream of items (River5). However, the reverse-chronological format is consistent.