How to read dynamic rss feed - asp.net

Question

In my application i will have dynamic rss feed url saved by users. so i want to know that how can i read that xml which will be returned by rss feed. what will be the structure of that xml ? I have reviewed some feed url and i noticed that most of them have title and description tags but i am not sure to this. if i get these two tags then i will parse xml but if they are not always available then how can i parse xml in that case.
these two contains title and description tag
http://rss.news.yahoo.com/rss/entertainment
http://xml.weather.yahoo.com/forecastrss?p=USCA1116

Answer 1

At first you need to read a XML file for that I recommend you to use XPath or Linq to XML, and as you already said there are three main elements that make up a feed; "title", "link" and "description".
Not a very long time ago I wrote a code to do that, I hope this works for you.
I created this two entities.
public class RssFeed
{
public string Title { get; set; }
public string Link { get; set; }
public string Description { get; set; }
public string PubDate { get; set; }
public string Language { get; set; }
public ObservableCollection<RssItem> RssItems { get; set; }
}
public class RssItem
{
public string Title { get; set; }
public string Description { get; set; }
public string Link { get; set; }
}
Then on this method I read every element from the XML file by using Linq to XML
private static void ReadFeeds()
{
string uri = #"http://news.yahoo.com/rss/entertainment";
WebClient client = new WebClient();
client.DownloadStringAsync(new Uri(uri, UriKind.Absolute));
client.DownloadStringCompleted += (s, a) =>
{
if (a.Error == null && !a.Cancelled)
{
var rssReader = XDocument.Parse(a.Result);
var feed = (from rssFeed in rssReader.Descendants("channel")
select new RssFeed()
{
Title = null != rssFeed.Descendants("title").FirstOrDefault() ?
rssFeed.Descendants("title").First().Value : string.Empty,
Link = null != rssFeed.Descendants("link").FirstOrDefault() ?
rssFeed.Descendants("link").First().Value : string.Empty,
Description = null != rssFeed.Descendants("description").FirstOrDefault() ?
rssFeed.Descendants("description").First().Value : string.Empty,
PubDate = null != rssFeed.Descendants("pubDate").FirstOrDefault() ?
rssFeed.Descendants("pubDate").First().Value : string.Empty,
Language = null != rssFeed.Descendants("language").FirstOrDefault() ?
rssFeed.Descendants("language").First().Value : string.Empty
}).Single();
var rssFeeds = (from rssItems in rssReader.Descendants("item")
select new RssItem()
{
Title = null != rssItems.Descendants("title").FirstOrDefault() ?
rssItems.Descendants("title").First().Value : string.Empty,
Link = null != rssItems.Descendants("link").FirstOrDefault() ?
rssItems.Descendants("link").First().Value : string.Empty,
Description = null != rssItems.Descendants("description").FirstOrDefault() ?
rssItems.Descendants("description").First().Value : string.Empty,
}).ToList();
feed.RssItems = new ObservableCollection<RssItem>(rssFeeds);
}
};
}
And finally you have your feed to be displayed wherever you want.