[WSG] RSS or Atom for an events calendar?
Hi all, Hopefully this is an applicable place to discuss this. I've just started looking into RSS/Atom/etc (news feeds in XML), and everything is going pretty well, but I'm working on a website for a band, and the news feeds seem easy enough, but I'm interested in the possibility of using RSS or Atom for calendar events (shows and tours). But I'm not sure RSS/Atom can be used in this way. The theory behind shows for a band is that they need to be advertised/shown UPTO the date of the event, then they're irrelevant. The theory behind news readers is that once you've read something, it no longer exists, which is not what I'm aiming for of course. RSS2.0 only seems to have a published date, not an expiry date, so that doesn't seem to help. Atom seems to have issued and modified, but again no expiry. So, how can I take advantage of RSS/Atom/etc to keep fans up-to-date with shows/tours? Some ideas I have: a) when a show is added/edited/deleted from the show database, a news item is created advising of the new/revised/deleted show, which would of course appear in the news feed. The advantage here is that there's multiple news items which can be tracked. The disadvantage is that shows won't appear in date order (or reverse date order) -- they'll simply be added to the feed as things change. b) a news feed of *just one item* containing a summary of all upcoming gigs is offered over RSS/Atom... as the gig database changes, this news item is either *modified*, or *over-written* with a new summary... the advantage here is that the summary will be ordered correctly, and the latest (and only) news post will contain all the information in one hit. Any other ideas? --- Justin French http://indent.com.au * The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list getting help *
Re: [WSG] RSS or Atom for an events calendar?
The only thing that will be useful for the general public is a basic RSS/ATOM feed that just announces dates when you know about them. You cannot build something that is going to somehow be useful in terms of edits or deletes. This sort of syndication is typically aggregated and kept at the discretion of the user -- sending additional info like the event is no more will only confuse folks. There is plenty of value in announcing new upcoming events though. You might also consider generating an iCal feed which is simple enough -- although Outlook has no idea (as per usual) the rest of the calendaring world regards iCal as a common protocol. -- geoff http://www.daemon.com.au/ Justin French wrote: Hi all, Hopefully this is an applicable place to discuss this. I've just started looking into RSS/Atom/etc (news feeds in XML), and everything is going pretty well, but I'm working on a website for a band, and the news feeds seem easy enough, but I'm interested in the possibility of using RSS or Atom for calendar events (shows and tours). But I'm not sure RSS/Atom can be used in this way. The theory behind shows for a band is that they need to be advertised/shown UPTO the date of the event, then they're irrelevant. The theory behind news readers is that once you've read something, it no longer exists, which is not what I'm aiming for of course. RSS2.0 only seems to have a published date, not an expiry date, so that doesn't seem to help. Atom seems to have issued and modified, but again no expiry. .snip.8. * The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list getting help *
Re: [WSG] RSS or Atom for an events calendar?
On 14/04/2004, at 12:38 PM, Geoff Bowers wrote: You might also consider generating an iCal feed which is simple enough -- although Outlook has no idea (as per usual) the rest of the calendaring world regards iCal as a common protocol. That's a great idea, and it looks like there's some PHP classes to do it all too! Is there a similar method of calendar publishing with Outlook at all? Justin --- Justin French http://indent.com.au * The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list getting help *
