The feed URI scheme was a suggested
uniform resource identifier (URI) scheme designed to facilitate subscription to
web feed
On the World Wide Web, a web feed (or news feed) is a data format used for providing users with frequently updated content. Content distributors ''syndicate'' a web feed, thereby allowing users to ''subscribe'' a channel to it by adding the feed ...
s; specifically, it was intended that a
news aggregator
In computing, a news aggregator, also termed a feed aggregator, feed reader, news reader, RSS reader or simply an aggregator, is client software or a web application that aggregates syndicated web content such as online newspapers, blogs, ...
be launched whenever a
hyperlink to a
feed URI was clicked in a
web browser
A web browser is application software for accessing websites. When a user requests a web page from a particular website, the browser retrieves its files from a web server and then displays the page on the user's screen. Browsers are used o ...
.
The scheme was intended to flag a document in a syndication format such as
Atom
Every atom is composed of a nucleus and one or more electrons bound to the nucleus. The nucleus is made of one or more protons and a number of neutrons. Only the most common variety of hydrogen has no neutrons.
Every solid, liquid, gas, ...
or
RSS. The document would be typically served over
HTTP
The Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) is an application layer protocol in the Internet protocol suite model for distributed, collaborative, hypermedia information systems. HTTP is the foundation of data communication for the World Wide We ...
.
History
In 2006 the
feed URI scheme was supported by several popular desktop aggregators, including
NetNewsWire, FeedDemon,
Safari, and
Flock. no effort seems to be underway to officially register the scheme at
IANA.
Critics hold that the purpose of the
feed URI scheme is better served by
MIME types, or that it is not a user-friendly solution for the problem of feed subscription, since a user who has not installed the appropriate software will receive an unhelpful browser error message on clicking a link to a
feed URI.
The
feed URI scheme was suggested in 2003
in and . These expired drafts were not submitted as
Internet drafts; the author later contributed to the work on the
atom standard.
Syntax
The syntax for a
feed URI may be expressed in
Backus–Naur form as follows:
::= "feed:" , "feed://"
Specifically, a
feed URI may be formed from any absolute URI (such as an absolute
URL) by prepending
feed, and as a special case, may be formed from any absolute
http
The Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) is an application layer protocol in the Internet protocol suite model for distributed, collaborative, hypermedia information systems. HTTP is the foundation of data communication for the World Wide We ...
URI by replacing the initial
http:// with
feed://.
The and constructs in the syntax are specified in RFC 3986 also known as
STD 66. Here is in essence the part of the original
http URI, and is the following absolute path introduced by a slash ""; it can be empty or absent. Therefore, the following are two examples of valid
feed URIs:
feed:https://example.com/entries.atom
feed://example.com/entries.atom
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Feed Uri Scheme
URI schemes
Web syndication
Proposals