rss init

rss please

Blogs on Medium without a RSS[^1] feed do my head in.
People spruiking the next vision of distributed web3 that can’t be bothered to decentralise their content in the current dimension of web. wtf.
Having a RSS feed reader allows you to define one or more streams of content, with new entries delivered to you as soon as they are published on the original web site/app.
You define the content in your stream!
This concept has fallen out of favor for the written word but remains at the heart of podcasts.

Skimming through my wide ranging, 20 year old, constantly updated feed makes me feel good :)
The tool I’ve used to build my content platform doesn’t provide RSS feeds out of the box. So I had to build a feed for my platform, see below for the details.

[^1]: RSS = Real Simple Syndication. Created by Dave Winer. Thanks Dave! Actually when I say RSS feed I mean any feed that achieves the same purpose including Atom.
There’s a Vice article that provides a remarkable background of the history of RSS and Atom.

the tech

I used this article on creating a sitemap.xml file to help create the RSS functionality.
I have provided my template code below.
I decided to configure RSS feed details directly in the template, rather than store it else where then load it into the template’s context. This seems wrong but is the most concise solution imo.
The template is basic af atm but will evolve over time.
Point your feed readers this way!

RSS Template

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<rss version="2.0">
  <channel>
      <title>a blog (working title)</title>
      <link>https://chris.esther.com </link>
      <description>chris esther writes</description>
      <copyright>Copyright: Chris Esther</copyright>
      <image> </image>

<%= for post <- @posts do %>
  <item>   
      <title><%= post.title %></title>
      <link> </link>
      <description><%= post.description %></description>
      <pubDate><%= post.date %></pubDate>
  </item>
<% end %>
  </channel>
</rss>

meta