For example, CodeDigest Rss feed will look like,

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>

<rss version="2.0">

  <channel>

  <title>CodeDigest.com Latest Articles</title>

  <link>http://www.codedigest.com</link>

  <description>Latest articles hosted on CodeDigest.com.</description>

  <item>

  <title>Useful Datagrid Tips</title>

  <description>There are some frequent queries that are being asked in most of the forums and UG’s regarding datagrid. I have compiled a list of useful tips from my previous posts and posted it here.</description>

  <link>http://www.codedigest.com/Articles/ASPNET/77_Useful_Datagrid_Tips.aspx</link>

  <pubDate>4/29/2008 9:47:12 AM</pubDate>

  </item>

</channel>

  </rss>

As we can see the above XML the whole contents is packed inside <rss> tag. The actual information about the posts is kept inside <item> tag which in turn is packed inside a <channel> tag. Read the history(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RSS_(file_format)) and specification of RSS here(http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss )

Binding RSS feed to DataList

This can be done using DataSet object ReadXml() method XmlTextReader Object.

XmlTextReader reader = null;

        try

        {

            reader = new XmlTextReader("http://www.codedigest.com/Articles/Rss.ashx");

            DataSet ds = new DataSet();

            ds.ReadXml(reader);

            dlRSS.DataSource = ds.Tables["item"];

            dlRSS.DataBind();

        }

        catch (Exception ex)

        {

            lblMessage.Text = ex.Message;

        }

        finally

        {

            reader.Close();

        }

From the sample RSS XML given above, we can find the actual posts/articles in the table with the name “item” because they are packed inside the <item> tag.

DataList

    <asp:DataList ID="dlRSS" runat="server" Width="100%">

        <ItemTemplate>      

                    <div class="RSSTitle"><asp:HyperLink ID="TitleLink" runat="server" Text='<%# Eval("title") %>' NavigateUrl='<%# Eval("link") %>'/></div>

                    <div class="RSSSubtitle"><asp:Label ID="SubtitleLabel" runat="server" Text='<%# Eval("description") %>' /></div>

                    <div class="RSSInfo">

                        posted on <asp:Label ID="DateRSSedLabel" runat="server" Text='<%# Eval("pubDate", "{0:d} @ {0:t}") %>' />

                    </div>         

        </ItemTemplate>

    </asp:DataList>

The output will be similar to below,

Since the above code connects to an external site to download the contents the best practice is to cache it instead of downloading it again and again. To do this we can put the datalist inside a user control and include an output cache directive like below.

<%@ OutputCache Duration="3600" VaryByParam="None" %>