RSS is a format for an XML document that describes a list of items, such as blog entries or news headlines. The document may just be a stream of XML created on the fly rather than a static file. In this post, we’ll tell you to put an RSS document (using Version 2.0) on a page by using the XmlDataSource and DataList controls.
Well what you need for this are as given below
- URL to a valid rss file it could be .xml,.rss,.aspx.,.php etc
- kind of schema of that rss file we call Xpath, to reach upto the content you are interested in.
A typical Rss file is like this.
A typical schema is like this
<rss>
<channel>
<item>
<title></title>
<description></description>
<link></link>
<pubDate></pubDate>
<!--...-->
</item>
</channel>
</rss>
XPath rss/channel/Item tell that this is Item from where you want to start fetching from.
Now i guess enough theoretical content has been described.
let’s start working.
Create a web site,
in default page or wherever you want to display the feeds put xmldatasource.
in navigationurl put the url of the rsss file. one example is (http://www.spaces.msn.com/members/mauliksoni/feed.rss). if you are choosing this Rss then put XPath=”rss/channel/item”.
take a data list and set its DataSourceID to the id of XmlDataSource you have taken.
in datalist set enableViewState to false.
Item template would be like this.
<ItemTemplate>
Title:<%# XPath("title") %><br /><br />
Description:<%# XPath("description")%>
<hr />
</ItemTemplate>
XPath(“Tiitle”) will print content of the Title tag and Xpath(“description”) will print content inside Description tag.
complete markup code is like this
<%@ Page Language="C#" AutoEventWireup="true" CodeFile="Default.aspx.cs" Inherits="_Default" %>
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
<head runat="server">
<title></title>
</head>
<body>
<form id="form1" runat="server">
<div>
<asp:XmlDataSource ID="XmlDataSource1" runat="server"
DataFile="http://www.spaces.msn.com/members/mauliksoni/feed.rss"
XPath="rss/channel/item"></asp:XmlDataSource>
<asp:DataList ID="DataList1" runat="server" DataSourceID="XmlDataSource1" EnableViewState="False">
<ItemTemplate>
Title:<%# XPath("title") %><br /><br />
Description:<%# XPath("description")%>
<hr />
</ItemTemplate>
</asp:DataList>
</div>
</form>
</body>
</html>
Run the project and see the feeds from your favorite site. Enjoy.
