Understanding RSS - Part Eight - Podcasting, VideoCasting & The Magic of the Enclosure Sub-Element

Part Two - Outline of How to Create an RSS Feed"

Part Five - How The RSS Feed Works & Some Programming Constructs"

Now it is time for Magic. Ever hear the term "PodCasting?" Well it originally came from the Apple IPod and that little device that has swept the world allowing everyone to hook into their favorite music (and now video etc.) The RSS specifications grew with the world around it and therefore the little XML "enclosure" command came to be found within the files.

Part Four - The Basic Elements of the Channel Element"

Part Six - RSS Channel Sub-Elements Specifically Image & How To Use It"

Or say I wanted to release a few short-shorts on Shakespeare's Sonnets. I would read them, record them, and then put the text of each into the description and my mp3 recording into the enclosure. Voila! An RSS on Shakespeare.

Within enclosure I can actually place any audio, mpg, jpeg..whatever into that little element. And what this means to the aggregator is, "Hey, my RSS file also has a few small additions that come with it. Grab those as well." And as part of this element the RSS file also says, "Hey, this is the format and this is the size of the file. Because I am being courteous and nice, and I want you the aggregator to know just how much you have to grab."

One critical caveat. Remember these are not text files and therefore they can get large. The larger they are the more the aggregator has to grab, the more bandwidth etc. Remember that when you release your songs on the Net in an RSS file for those IPod-ers out there!

Part One - "RSS Mania Addiction - An Introduction to RSS and the Terminology"

Just to remind you. The enclosure command consists of three parts:url - The URL of the actual enclosure.length - The size in bytes and not an estimate but a total sizetype - A standard MIME type, e.g. Audio, Video, Text etc. A list and explanation of standard MIME types can be found here - http://www.fileformat.info/info/mimetype/standard.htmLets see how this would be done, without too much coding. We will begin with the Item Element, so this is just a part of the RSS file. (I left out the guid here.)

Summertime by Janis Joplinhttp://www.janisjoplin.com/songs/summertime.htmlSummertime, And the livin' is easyFish are jumpin' And the cotton is highYour daddy's rich And your mamma's good lookin'So hush little baby Don't you cryOne of these mornings You're going to rise up singingThen you'll spread your wings And you'll take to the skyBut till that morning There's a'nothing can harm youWith daddy and mamma standing bySummertime, And the livin' is easyFish are jumpin' And the cotton is highYour daddy's rich And your mamma's good lookin'So hush little baby Don't you cryGeorge Gershwin sung by Janis JoplinBluesJazzhttp://www.janisjoplin.com/comments/summertime.htmlSat, 10 Dec 2005 23:00:00 GMT

What does this mean? Well at first RSS was limited to the text format. What RSS first generation files were doing were spreading the news of the world in small little text headline files. Of course the human desire for ever more and more is impossible to stop. What if we wanted to send picture? Well there is the [!Cdata command which we will discuss in the next article. But what if I wanted to send some type of information that was not text? That is where the enclosure does its magic.

Part Three - The Template File"