The STS XML Library provides support for secondary libraries ("plugins") that manipulate specific kinds of XML documents and use the methods that are in the XML Library to do so. All plugins follow the same security restrictions (Basic/Standard) as the associated STS XML Library.

The RSS Plugin allows you to manipulate RSS feed XML documents with the STS XML Library more easily than just manipulating the XML directly. The plugin supports the RSS 0.91, 0.92, and 2.00 specifications.

Here's an example of a simple RSS XML document; this is used for the discussion and list of methods below:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<rss version="0.91">
 <channel>
   <title>Latest News</title>
   <description>Provides the lastest news on the application MyApp.</description>
   <link>http://www.myapp.com</link>
   <language>en-us</language>
   <item>
     <title>MyApp receives kudos at CSS show</title>
     <link>http://www.myapp.com/read.php?item=23</link>
     <description>CSS attendees rated MyApp an average for 4 starts out of five for ease of 
       use and overall interface design.</description>
   </item>
   <item>
     <title>MyApp 4.1 to ship in June 2006</title>
     <link>http://www.myapp.com/read.php?item=22</link>
     <description>MyApp Corp. announces several new features and enhancements to MyApp 
       to be released as version 4.1. The proposed release date is June 15, 2006.</description>
   </item>
 </channel>
</rss>

Most of the information in an RSS feed that is to be manipulated is contained in the TEXT node that is owned by child ELEM nodes of either a <channel> or <item> parent node. For the purposes of the RSS methods described below, these child ELEM nodes are referred to as virtual "properties", and the TEXT content they contain is referred to as the "value" of a property.

For example, using the RSS Sample above, there are four channel properties (title, description, link, and language), and three item properties for each of the two items (title, link, and description). So to get the language of a channel, you would get the language "property" of the first channel.

Please note the difference between these virtual properties, and true node attributes, such as the domain attribute of the cloud node in the RSS 0.92 specification, as shown below:

<cloud domain="URL to the rssCloud web service" port="port" path="path" 
registerProcedure="procedure for registration" protocol="protocol"/>

The RSS Plugin gives you easy access to the virtual properties, but not true node attributes; for that, you should use the STS XML Library's stsXML_GetAttribute method.

In the methods below, you can refer to an item either by position or by its title property. This lets you do things like this to get the link property for the item with the title of "Latest News":

put stsXML_GetRSSItemProperty("Latest News","link")
--> http:/www.myapp.com

The functions (or “methods”) available in the RSS Plugin are as follows:

Channel Methods
stsXML_GetRSSChannelProperty	This method retrieves a specific property from an RSS channel (title, link, description, etc.)
stsXML_SetRSSChannelProperty	This method sets a specific property of an RSS channel (title, link, description, etc.).
Item Methods
stsXML_GetRSSItemTitles	This method retrieves all of the item titles from an RSS channel, in a return-delimited list. Using the sample above, you'd get this back after a call to stsXML_GetRSSItemTitles on channel 1 (the only channel): Latest News MyApp receives kudos at CSS show MyApp 4.1 to ship in June 2006
stsXML_GetRSSItemProperty	This method retrieves a specific property from a specific item of an RSS channel.
stsXML_SetRSSItemProperty	This method sets a specific property of a specific item of an RSS channel.
stsXML_CreateRSSItem	This method creates a new item for the specified channel.
stsXML_DeleteRSSItem	This method deletes an existing item from the specified channel.

The table below shows all changes that have been made to this version of the RSS Plugin:

Release	Date	Changes and Additions
1.0.2	3/29/2007	Fixed bug where an error would be displayed if you attempted to execute any of the methods from the Workshop when the STS XML Library was not "in use" Fixed bug where stsXML_DeleteRSSItem was being called improperly from the Workshop and would generate an error
1.0.1	8/27/2006	Fixed documentation issue where stsXML_DeleteRSSItem was described as a command, not a function
1.0	3/11/2006	Initial Release