RSS <item> Element

Each <item> element can define an article or "story" in the RSS feed.

<item> element

Please see the following RSS document:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1" ?>
<rss version="2.0"><channel>
  <title>CodeW3C.com Home Page</title>
  <link>http://www.codew3c.com</link>
  <description>Free web building tutorials</description>
  <item>
    <title>RSS Tutorial</title>
    <link>http://www.codew3c.com/rss</link>
    <description>New RSS tutorial on CodeW3C.com</description>
  </item>
</channel></rss>

As mentioned earlier, each <item> element can define an article or story in the RSS feed.

The <item> element has three required child elements:

  • <title> - Defines the title of the item. (e.g., RSS Tutorial)
  • <link> - Defines the hyperlink to reach the item. (e.g., http://www.codew3c.com/rss)
  • <description> - Describes this item (e.g., CodeW3C's RSS tutorial)

In addition, there are several optional child elements of <item>, which we will introduce the most important ones below.

The <author> element

The <author> child element is used to specify the email address of the author of an item.

Note:To prevent spam, some developers may not use this <author> element.

The author of the items in the above RSS document may be:

<author>service@codew3c.com</author>

The <comments> element

The <comments> child element allows linking a project to comments related to it.

The comments in the items of the above RSS document may look like this:

<comments>http://www.codew3c.com/comments</comments>

The <enclosure> element

The <enclosure> child element allows importing a media file into an item.

The <enclosure> element has three required attributes:

  • url - Defines the URL pointing to this media file
  • length - Defines the length of this media file (in bytes)
  • type - Defines the type of the media file

In the above RSS document, the media files included in the items may look like this:

<enclosure url="http://www.codew3c.com/rss/rss.mp3" length="5000" type="audio/mpeg" />

RSS <item> Reference Manual

Element Description
<author> Optional. Specifies the email address of the project author.
<category> Optional. Defines one or more categories to which this project belongs.
<comments> Optional. Allows an item to link to comments (files) related to this project.
<description> Required. Describes this project.
<enclosure> Optional. Allows importing a media file into an item.
<guid> Optional. Defines a unique identifier for this project.
<link> Required. Defines the hyperlink pointing to this project.
<pubDate> Optional. Defines the last published date of this project.
<source> Optional. Specifies a third-party source for this project.
<title> Required. Defines the title of this project.