Usage of RDF

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Soldato
Joined
9 Nov 2004
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I'm writing an RSS reader of sorts, and I've just been reading into the different feed types - RDF seems a bit rubbish. It doesn't even seem to record the date of each item, which seems to be a bit useless for a site summary markup language. Is RDF widely used enough that it needs to be supported in an RSS reading application, or have I missed the point on what it's actually used for?

have any of you guys written a similar application, and if you've supported RDF, how did you get round the lack of date thing?

cheers!
ok, it does seem to have a date element, but it's still really weird!
 
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RDF is annoying to parse - but it's used enough to warrant inclusion, unfortunately. So no advice other than it's a hard road catering for all the sites whose feeds are so different from the norm that they break your reader. :(

This is why all feeds should be Atom!
 
I always thought atom was a bit rubbish, but it looks brilliant after actually doing some reading!

When you're using an RDF feed, are there mandatory elements to be included? I seem to remember last time I made a feed, it was RSS 2 and the validators got all upset if I got certain bits wrong - like lack of inclusion for date. I can't seem to find anything definitive on what must be included - the example on wikipedia didn't use the dc:date field, and you'd have thought that date would be a pretty important one, really!!

edit: right - figured that all out now - XPath is a bit useful! :D
 
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