Setting up core <channel> elements

Last updated on

3 January 2023

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This guide applies mainly to 2.x branches of Views RSS module, although some of the features described here were implemented in the most recent versions of 1.x-dev branches as well.

To have all the fields described below available, you first need to enable Views RSS: Core Elements submodule (included in main Views RSS package).

Required channel elements

<title>

Added automatically from view's Title value in Basic settings section.

Example: GoUpstate.com News Headlines

More information: RSS Specification and RSS Best Practices.

<link>

Generated automatically by module from your Drupal site's URL.

More information: RSS Specification and RSS Best Practices.

<description>

Provide value in style settings in Feed Description section.

Example: The latest news from GoUpstate.com, a Spartanburg Herald-Journal Web site.

More information: RSS Specification and RSS Best Practices.

Optional channel elements

<category>

Enter one or more categories, separating them with comma.

Example: News, Newspapers, Regional

More information: RSS Specification, RSS Best Practices and Comments.

<image>

Enter path to the image file relative to your Drupal installation directory.

Example: sites/default/files/feed-image.png

More information: RSS Specification and RSS Best Practices.

<cloud>

Enter URL (fully-qualified URI) of your RssCloud service.

Example: soap://rpc.sys.com:80/RPC2#pingMe

where:

soap will be protocol attribute,
rpc.sys.com will be domain attribute,
/RPC2 will be path attribute,
80 will be port attribute,
pingMe will be registerProcedure attribute.

More information: RSS Specification and RSS Best Practices.

<copyright>

Enter copyright statement.

More information: RSS Specification and RSS Best Practices.

<docs>

Enter a URL that points to the documentation for the format used in the RSS file.

Example: http://www.rssboard.org/rss-specification

More information: RSS Specification and RSS Best Practices.

<generator>

Enter a string indicating the program used to generate the channel.

Example: MightyInHouse Content System v2.3

More information: RSS Specification and RSS Best Practices.

<language>

Enter the language the channel is written in.

Example: en-us

More information: RSS Specification and RSS Best Practices.

<managingEditor>

Enter email address for person responsible for editorial content.

Example: geo@herald.com (George Matesky)

More information: RSS Specification and RSS Best Practices.

<skipDays>

Enter names of days during which aggregators could skip checking your feed, separating multiple items with comma.

Example: Saturday, Sunday

More information: RSS Specification and RSS Best Practices.

<skipHours>

Enter hours which aggregators could skip checking your feed, separating multiple items with comma.

Example: 0, 1, 2, 16, 23

More information: RSS Specification and RSS Best Practices.

<ttl>

Enter channel's time to leave (how long a channel can be cached before refreshing from the source).

Example: 60

More information: RSS Specification and RSS Best Practices.

<webMaster>

Enter email address for person responsible for technical issues relating to channel.

Example: betty@herald.com (Betty Guernsey)

More information: RSS Specification and RSS Best Practices.

<pubDate>

Generated automatically by the module for core view types. For other types, see Adding channel
and elements for non-core view types.

Please note: This date must be in a special format. Itunes requires that it be RFC 822 which means in Drupal you can choose the 'Custom' date format option and specify >r (which is similar to D, d M Y h:m:s T, but defaults to English even if site in in another language) in order to format your dates correctly.

More information: RSS Specification and RSS Best Practices.