Use ROME for serverside feed conversion

[Tilman Bender-2]

Hello there,

I want to write a mobile feedreader as part of my studies. (Yes I know  
there already exist several of these)
To minimize the parser complexity of the software on the mobile device  
I came up with the idea to parse the different RSS  flavors on a  
server and convert them into a single format,
which I deliver to the mobile device.

This way I would only have to maintain a parser for a single format on  
the mobile device and do the ugly work in an environment where there  
are the libraries and processing
power for this job.

Is this possible with ROME?
Can the conversion be done without loss of information?
I read a thread from 2005 about RSS-Attributes being lost:

https://rome.dev.java.net/servlets/BrowseList?list=users&by=thread&from=220063

It is not clear to me if the proposed "union" design approach has made  
it into rome by now.

What format would you suggest for delivering to the mobile device? I  
am currently thinking of Atom 1.0. Is that too heavy?

And a more general question: Do you folks know a good data source for  
statistics about the "marketshare" of the
various syndication formats? I tried http://www.syndic8.com/stats.php?section=overview 
  but it doesn't seem
very up to date and seems a bit broken. Information like that would be  
really helpful when discussing what formats
to support.

thanks in advance

Tilman Bender
Student of Software Engineering
Heilbronn University
tbender@...





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[Jeffrey Blattman-2]

if you are developing on android, you can just use the ROME library on the device.

On 10/9/09 7:20 AM, Tilman Bender wrote:

Hello there,

I want to write a mobile feedreader as part of my studies. (Yes I know there already exist several of these)
To minimize the parser complexity of the software on the mobile device I came up with the idea to parse the different RSS  flavors on a server and convert them into a single format,
which I deliver to the mobile device.

This way I would only have to maintain a parser for a single format on the mobile device and do the ugly work in an environment where there are the libraries and processing
power for this job.

Is this possible with ROME?
Can the conversion be done without loss of information?
I read a thread from 2005 about RSS-Attributes being lost:

https://rome.dev.java.net/servlets/BrowseList?list=users&by=thread&from=220063

It is not clear to me if the proposed "union" design approach has made it into rome by now.

What format would you suggest for delivering to the mobile device? I am currently thinking of Atom 1.0. Is that too heavy?

And a more general question: Do you folks know a good data source for statistics about the "marketshare" of the
various syndication formats? I tried http://www.syndic8.com/stats.php?section=overview but it doesn't seem
very up to date and seems a bit broken. Information like that would be really helpful when discussing what formats
to support.

thanks in advance

Tilman Bender
Student of Software Engineering
Heilbronn University
tbender@...





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[Tilman Bender-2]

Hi Jeffrey,

Sorry, it is the other big thing from Cupertino ;-)
That is why I want to do most on the server-side.

Tilman Bender
Student des Software Engineering
Hochschule Heilbronn
tbender@...



Am 09.10.2009 um 19:50 schrieb Jeffrey Blattman:

> if you are developing on android, you can just use the ROME library  
> on the device.


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[Nick Lothian]

> Hello there,
>
> I want to write a mobile feedreader as part of my studies. (Yes I know
> there already exist several of these)
> To minimize the parser complexity of the software on the mobile device
> I came up with the idea to parse the different RSS  flavors on a
> server and convert them into a single format,
> which I deliver to the mobile device.
>
> This way I would only have to maintain a parser for a single format on
> the mobile device and do the ugly work in an environment where there
> are the libraries and processing
> power for this job.
>
> Is this possible with ROME?

Yes

> Can the conversion be done without loss of information?
> I read a thread from 2005 about RSS-Attributes being lost:
>
> https://rome.dev.java.net/servlets/BrowseList?list=users&by=thread&from
> =220063
>
> It is not clear to me if the proposed "union" design approach has made
> it into rome by now.
>
> What format would you suggest for delivering to the mobile device? I
> am currently thinking of Atom 1.0. Is that too heavy?
>

Atom 1.0 is fine.


> And a more general question: Do you folks know a good data source for
> statistics about the "marketshare" of the
> various syndication formats? I tried
> http://www.syndic8.com/stats.php?section=overview
>   but it doesn't seem
> very up to date and seems a bit broken. Information like that would be
> really helpful when discussing what formats
> to support.
>

If you support Atom 1.0 and RSS 2.0 then you will probably support 99% of sites on the internet. ROME also support RSS 1.0, RSS 0.9x and Atom 0.3. That probably gets you to 99.999% coverage.

Nick

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[Tilman Bender-2]

Am 12.10.2009 um 00:22 schrieb Nick Lothian:

>> Can the conversion be done without loss of information?
>> I read a thread from 2005 about RSS-Attributes being lost:
>>
>> https://rome.dev.java.net/servlets/BrowseList?list=users&by=thread&from
>> =220063
>>
>> It is not clear to me if the proposed "union" design approach has  
>> made
>> it into rome by now.
>>
>> What format would you suggest for delivering to the mobile device? I
>> am currently thinking of Atom 1.0. Is that too heavy?
>>
>
> Atom 1.0 is fine.

Thank you for your reply, Nick. Could you comment on the information  
loss
during the conversion as well. This was the more pressing issue for me.
Will the conversion keep all attributes?

>
>> And a more general question: Do you folks know a good data source for
>> statistics about the "marketshare" of the
>> various syndication formats? I tried
>> http://www.syndic8.com/stats.php?section=overview
>>  but it doesn't seem
>> very up to date and seems a bit broken. Information like that would  
>> be
>> really helpful when discussing what formats
>> to support.
>>
>
> If you support Atom 1.0 and RSS 2.0 then you will probably support  
> 99% of sites on the internet. ROME also support RSS 1.0, RSS 0.9x  
> and Atom 0.3. That probably gets you to 99.999% coverage.
>

Yeah, that was my first impression too. Unfortunately profs tend to  
like hard facts more than gut instincts.
Really no idea where/how I could find data on RSS/Atom distribution?

Anyway  thanks for your reply!


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[Robert (kebernet) Cooper]

On Mon, Oct 12, 2009 at 5:11 AM, Tilman Bender
<tbender@...> wrote:

> Am 12.10.2009 um 00:22 schrieb Nick Lothian:
>>>
>>> Can the conversion be done without loss of information?
>>> I read a thread from 2005 about RSS-Attributes being lost:
>>>
>>> https://rome.dev.java.net/servlets/BrowseList?list=users&by=thread&from
>>> =220063
>>>
>>> It is not clear to me if the proposed "union" design approach has made
>>> it into rome by now.
>>>
>>> What format would you suggest for delivering to the mobile device? I
>>> am currently thinking of Atom 1.0. Is that too heavy?
>>>
>>
>> Atom 1.0 is fine.
>
> Thank you for your reply, Nick. Could you comment on the information loss
> during the conversion as well. This was the more pressing issue for me.
> Will the conversion keep all attributes?
>

ROME will preserve pretty much all the relevant information from RSS
0.X-2.0 into Atom. The biggest area where things get problematic is
character encoding. RSS doesn't specify mime types on tags, so some
times you will get HTML inside the RSS, sometimes you will get escaped
HTML inside the RSS. So for instance:

<description><b>This is my bold intro</b> &amp; this
is some plain text</description>

vs

<description>This is some plain text & this is some more text</description>

ROME is really relying on JDOM to handle string equivalency in XML
(that is <tag>&</tag> ==  <tag><![CDATA[&]]></tag> for all
intents and purposes), so you might need some heuristic to detect this
for formatting on the iphone.

However, beyond this, equivalent data in different formats between RSS
and Atom will generally be maintained. With the exception of Dublin
Core and Content, which get mapped to Atom:* values, all other plugin
modules will be passed through, or in the case of certain types where
there are expressly different versions (like the Creative Commons
module), converted.

>>
>>> And a more general question: Do you folks know a good data source for
>>> statistics about the "marketshare" of the
>>> various syndication formats? I tried
>>> http://www.syndic8.com/stats.php?section=overview
>>>  but it doesn't seem
>>> very up to date and seems a bit broken. Information like that would be
>>> really helpful when discussing what formats
>>> to support.
>>>
>>
>> If you support Atom 1.0 and RSS 2.0 then you will probably support 99% of
>> sites on the internet. ROME also support RSS 1.0, RSS 0.9x and Atom 0.3.
>> That probably gets you to 99.999% coverage.
>>
>
> Yeah, that was my first impression too. Unfortunately profs tend to like
> hard facts more than gut instincts.
> Really no idea where/how I could find data on RSS/Atom distribution?
>
> Anyway  thanks for your reply!
>
>
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> To unsubscribe, e-mail: users-unsubscribe@...
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>
>

--
:Robert "kebernet" Cooper
::kebernet@...
Alice's cleartext
Charlie is the attacker
Bob signs and encrypts
http://pgp.mit.edu:11371/pks/lookup?op=get&search=0x9E8759F8

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[Tilman Bender-2]

Am 12.10.2009 um 14:25 schrieb Robert kebernet Cooper:

> ROME will preserve pretty much all the relevant information from RSS
> 0.X-2.0 into Atom. The biggest area where things get problematic is
> character encoding. RSS doesn't specify mime types on tags, so some
> times you will get HTML inside the RSS, sometimes you will get escaped
> HTML inside the RSS. So for instance:
>
> <description><b>This is my bold intro</b> &amp; this
> is some plain text</description>
>
> vs
>
> <description>This is some plain text & this is some more text</
> description>
>
> ROME is really relying on JDOM to handle string equivalency in XML
> (that is <tag>&</tag> ==  <tag><![CDATA[&]]></tag> for all
> intents and purposes), so you might need some heuristic to detect this
> for formatting on the iphone.
>
> However, beyond this, equivalent data in different formats between RSS
> and Atom will generally be maintained. With the exception of Dublin
> Core and Content, which get mapped to Atom:* values, all other plugin
> modules will be passed through, or in the case of certain types where
> there are expressly different versions (like the Creative Commons
> module), converted.

Thank you robert! That was the more detailed reply I was asking for.


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