RSS.NET class library - check invalid feed

Question

Hi

I'm currently using the RSS.MET class library to open and read feeds, but I need to be able to find out if a supplied feed is actually valid. For example, if I pass it "http://www.google.com", I want it to tell me that it isn't a valid RSS feed. How would I go about doing this?

I've already tried passing it through a try .. catch block.

try
{
    Rss.RssReader reader = new Rss.RssReader(cast.PodcastURL);    
}
catch (Exception ex)
{
    MessageBox.Show(ex.Message);
}

But that hasn't returned the desired effect.

Answer 1

According to the documentation, RssReader.Read will throw an exception if it can't read the rss file. (I guess it will be an XmlException).

Answer 2

Well if for some reason you don't want to work with the exception method, you could load the data in a xml file and check whether it has a top node rss...

I have worked extensively with RSS and Atom feeds but haven't used any special class to handle... Linq to XML makes handling raw XML pretty easy... :)