feed URI scheme
The feed URI scheme was a suggested uniform resource identifier (URI) scheme designed to facilitate subscription to web feeds; specifically, it was intended that a news aggregator be launched whenever a hyperlink to a feed URI was clicked in a web browser.
The scheme was intended to flag a document in a syndication format such as Atom or RSS. The document would be typically served over HTTP.
History
[edit]In 2006 the feed URI scheme was supported by several popular desktop aggregators, including NetNewsWire, FeedDemon, Safari, and Flock. As of 2011[update] no effort seems to be underway to officially register the scheme at IANA.[1]
Critics hold that the purpose of the feed URI scheme is better served by MIME types,[2] or that it is not a user-friendly solution for the problem of feed subscription, since a user who has not installed the appropriate software will receive an unhelpful browser error message on clicking a link to a feed URI.
The feed URI scheme was suggested in 2003[3] in draft-obasanjo-feed-URI-scheme-01 and 02. These expired drafts were not submitted as Internet drafts; the author later contributed to the work on the atom standard.
Syntax
[edit]The syntax for a feed URI may be expressed in Backus–Naur form as follows:
<feed_uri> ::= "feed:" <absolute_uri> | "feed://" <authority> <path-abempty>
Specifically, a feed URI may be formed from any absolute URI (such as an absolute URL) by prepending feed, and as a special case, may be formed from any absolute http URI by replacing the initial http:// with feed://.
The <authority> and <path-abempty> constructs in the syntax are specified in RFC 3986 also known as STD 66. Here <authority> is in essence the userinfo@host:port part of the original http URI, and <path-abempty> is the following absolute path introduced by a slash "/"; it can be empty or absent. Therefore, the following are two examples of valid feed URIs:
feed:https://example.com/entries.atom feed://example.com/entries.atom
References
[edit]- ^ "Uniform Resource Identifier (URI) Schemes per RFC4395". Internet Assigned Numbers Authority. Retrieved 2011-10-17.
- ^ Nemerson, Evan (September 10, 2004). "On the feed:// URI scheme". Archived from the original on June 14, 2006. Retrieved 2009-06-04.
- ^ Dare Obasanjo (2003-12-09). "Request For Comments: The "feed" URI Scheme". 25hoursaday.com/weblog. Retrieved 2011-10-17.