Quick success with XmlSerialization and RSS

I have been tinkering with adding an RSS feed on the EvanAndAbby.com site the past few “free times” I had available. After very little time I can say that the site is fully setup for syndication. I have implemented the 2.0 RSS specification after completing 8 simple steps.

• Grabbed a sample RSS 2.0 Xml file


• Created the XSD scheme using the above Xml sample file. Saved the results locally as my rss2.xsd file.


• Generated the System.Xml.Serialization class by running the following command:


• xsd -c -l:c# -n:Your.Namespace.Here "C:\PathToXsdFile\RSS2.xsd" /out:"C:\Temp"


• Added the generated class to my project


• Created the rss aspx page that will return “text/xml” as its Response.ContentType


• Instantiate the Rss and RssChannel objects from the generated class and fill the needed properties.


• Built the RssChannelItems. In my case I had a DataTable I could loop through.


• Lastly, Serialized the Rss object to a string that is sent in the response.

Bonus Step:
Validated the feed to ensure I was correctly following the specification.

That’s it!! With the help of some generation tools and the System.Xml assembly implementing this was very painless. XmlSerialization rules!