feed file

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A feed file is a feed represented as a side file (a separate file, as opposed to as part of an existing HTML page, e.g. homepage), typically in a custom feed-specific format (e.g. legacy[1] XML like RSS/Atom, or JSON like ActivityStreams 2.0). Feed files are superseded by simply marking up feeds already present on HTML pages, e.g. with h-entry and optionally h-feed.

Contents 1 Advantages 1.1 Full-text feeds 2 Criticism 2.1 DRY Violations 2.2 Maintenance 2.3 Out of date 2.4 Inefficient Representation 2.5 No Archives 2.6 No Since Support 3 See Also

Advantages

Full-text feeds

Feed readers only have to retrieve a single file that contains all the latest posts with their full text contents. h-feeds mostly[2] require retrieving the h-feed URL and all linked h-entry URLs if they want to provide the same user experience (displaying full content and not only headlines).

• Counter-evidence: My h-feed, at http://tantek.com/ has latest posts with full text contents. This is typical for h-feeds, and thus typically relegates feed files unnecessary and inefficient per #Criticism below (extra markup required, extra artificial precision in datetimes required, etc.). - Tantek Çelik

Comparision of required bandwidth: Atom feed vs. h-feed size

Criticism

Feed files, being separate from actual viewable content on a website, suffer from several problems like:

DRY Violations

As a duplicate of information already in the HTML of a web page, feed files are an example of the usual DRY violations.

Maintenance

Higher maintenance (requiring a separate URL, separate code path to generate, separate format understanding)

Out of date

Feed files become out of date with the visible HTML page (often because of broken separate code path), e.g.:

• 2015-02-03: 50 days out of date: http://indiewebcamp.com/irc/2015-02-03#t1422988681803
• 2015-04-26 (reported) :

  my RSS failed once for 3 weeks even though I generated it from the same database, because I changed the name of a field! Updated HTML templates but forgot the feed templates, since invisible

  [3]

Inefficient Representation

Inefficient representation (XML feeds tend to be "wordier" and require more elements, duplication of data, artificial precision in datetimes, etc. all of which add up to higher bandwidth costs etc.)

No Archives

• no access or discovery of archives

No Since Support

• no way of getting content since a particular datetime

See Also

• side-file
• feed
• h-entry
• PuSH