Accessing remote RSS feed using Google Feeds API

Question

Basically my question is not about how, its about Why ? :) Now i will tell what what i know, then tell me what i missing (if any).

In Firefox you can not access remote XML files such as RSS feed using Javascript, because you will get access denied error. Normally to solve it we implement proxy (Internal page to query the content) so we access it locally.

Another solution is to use Goolge Feeds API (or one of the extensions such JQuery extensions built on this API).

My question is very simple? Why does this Google Feed API works and can load the remote XML while with manual script we can not do it ? What i am missing here ?

Answer 1

Google Feeds API gets the feed contents through a proxy on www.google.com/uds/something/something.

This is how it looks like in ASCII architecture.

yoursite.com                            |
[1] v    ^ [6]                          |
    v    ^                              |  <-- Client
Google Feeds API JS (on yoursite.com)   |
[2] v    ^ [5]                          |
----v----^----------------------------------------------------------------------
    v    ^                              |
www.google.com/uds/GFeeds?..            |  <-- Server (Proxy)
[3] v    ^ [4]                          |     
    v    ^                              |
www.feed.com/..                         |  <-- Feed URL