An Easy-To-Use Feed Middleware for Application Development with RSS/Atom Feeds

RSS and atom feeds are XML representations of the entries in frequently updating Websites, which enable users to subscribe to those syndicated contents using feed readers. As feeds are gaining more and more adoptions due to the ubiquity of blogs, various extensions are written for them to carry more semantic information. Ordinary tools which treat them as simple XML documents on the Web are not sufficient for application development. In this paper, a middleware is proposed to aid application development involving RSS/atom feeds. It handles fetching, parsing and storage of feeds for developers and provides them with a set of easy-to-use interfaces to write procedural and event-driven applications. Compared with the Windows RSS platform, it is more flexible and easier to work with. When extended with industrial-strength databases and servers, it can be used by organizations or individuals to solve real world integration problems.