RSS link vs. guid vs. source elements

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RSS link vs. guid vs. source elements

I've been researching newsfeed formats for various reasons. I've been using Rome to convert to and from various formats and that revealed a problem with Roller's RSS feed. After re-reading the loosey goosey RSS specs, I'm thinking that I it wrong in the Roller RSS feeds. What do you think? Currently, Roller uses the following elements for links:

<guid isPermaLink="true"> - the permalink
<link> - the (optional) source link, i.e. the one link that the blog entry is about

After looking at some Radio generated RSS 2.0 feeds, seems like Roller should do this:

<link> - the permalink
<guid isPermaLink="true"> - the permalink, same as <link>
<source url="[url of source]"> - the (optional) source link

Have the permalink in two places (link and guid) seems silly. Should we drop guid entirely? Putting the source link in the source element seems like right think to do, but the spec says the source url "links to the XMLization of the source" - that is, the source url should point to an RSS feed. Is that the common usage of the source element?

Dave Johnson in Roller 03:37AM Aug 27, 2004 Comments [3]
Tags: Roller

Comments:

Some older clients won't look for guid elements. Some newer clients use guids to match items even in the face of an update. Yes, source is defined as a pointer to the feed.

Posted by Sam Ruby on August 27, 2004 at 12:23 PM EDT #

I still think we are/were doing it the right way. Of course if one of those older clients that Sam mentions gets our feed then it'll go off to the wrong point. The way I read that "spec" the link is what the description is about, not where the description can be found.

Of course, if the guid is *not* a permalink, then where is the description to be found? Screwy.

Ya know, this is why some people want Atom, to clear up all this confusion.

Posted by Lance Lavandowska on August 27, 2004 at 01:01 PM EDT #

I think Roller's current approach is exactly right. The way you describe Radio's behavior, the link tag is redundant. If your post links to something out on the web, please put that there. The source tag should be used if you know what RSS feed this item was republished from. In my blog/aggregator system, frassle (http://frassle.rura.org), we use the link tag to thread comments. For example, suppose you write a post with permalink X. If I write a post with link X, frassle will display it as a comment on your original post. Frassle uses this convention to support comments on your own blog; if you don't have a weblog and you comment on a frassle post, frassle gives you a weblog and sets your link element properly. So, when you use the link and permalink elements in the ways Roller does currently, frassle can thread your posts underneath the things they respond to. The way Radio does it, the link element contains no useful information.

Posted by Shimon Rura on September 01, 2004 at 06:32 PM EDT #

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