Where to create an RSS feed for dynamic website

Question

Hi everyone,

I'm currently creating a website a little bit like Digg.com. There are different category like "Technology", "Sports", etc.. I want to create an RSS feeds for my website and while doing research on this, I have question that I can't find the answer.

First, this is what I have:

-I have the .NET code in C# that create a file with the last 15 news from a query from my database.

What I need to know:

-Is the RSS feeds (the xml file) needs to be generated at each load of the page (I saw that on some tutorial page but maybe it was only for a educational purpose). Personaly, I'm thinking about regenerating the .xml file each time someone submit something new. Is this a good idea?

-Do I need to create a different file for each categorie. Example: feedSports.xml, feedTechnology.xml, etc??? Or is there another way (I saw something about channel.???)

-What does feedburner do with all of this?

Thanks a lot for you help. I know this must be very newbie question so that's why I can't find anything answering this clearly on google.

DarkJaf

Answer 1

Hi DarkJaf,

Your feeds would be generated just as your HTML pages are generated, after each request. But instead of outputting HTML it would be outputting RSS.

I probably would not make a file for each feed but it sure is possible. A better approach may be to pass a variable via GET or POST to your page generating the RSS and grab the data that pertains to the variable passed. You most likely can use the same logic you use for generate your HTML news lists if you isolate your code well.

I would also take a look at the article posted by Raj. It looks like C# has a nice namespace (System.ServiceModel.Syndication) that contains some objects that make the job pretty easy.

Have fun!

Nick

nickgs.com