Hi
RSS Feeds are just XMLs – so building a RSS reader is not so difficult, first you know how to do it
Let’s start with looking at C# function that reads the RSS Feeds.
First step is to collect the feeds. This is done by using WebRequest:
System.Net.WebRequest myRequest = System.Net.WebRequest.Create(rssURL); System.Net.WebResponse myResponse = myRequest.GetResponse(); System.IO.Stream rssStream = myResponse.GetResponseStream(); System.Xml.XmlDocument rssDoc = new System.Xml.XmlDocument(); rssDoc.Load(rssStream);
Now that we have collected the feeds, we are able to process the XML (rssDoc). In my example I would like to run though the items and then write the title.
This would look something like this:
System.Xml.XmlNodeList rssItems = rssDoc.SelectNodes("rss/channel/item"); string title = ""; string link = ""; for (int i = 0; i < rssItems.Count; i++) { title = rssItems.Item(i).SelectSingleNode("title").InnerText; link = rssItems.Item(i).SelectSingleNode("link").InnerText; Response.Write("<p><a href='" + link + "' target='new'>" + title + "</a><br/>"); Response.Write("</p>"); }
That’s all, now you have a function that can collect the Feeds.
Please Notice – not all Feeds have the same XML format. They can/will differ from Feed provider to Feed provider.
Now lets take a closer look on the ASP.Net page.
<%@ Page Language="C#" %> <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd"> <script runat="server"> public void GetFeed(string rssURL) { //Put here the code descriped ealier in this section } </script> <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> <head runat="server"> <title>mibuso Feeds</title> </head> <body style ="font-family: Tahoma,Arial,Verdana,Helvetica;"> <form id="form1" runat="server"> <div> <% rssUrl = "http://www.mibuso.com/forum/smartfeed.php?forum=23&firstpostonly=1&limit=NO_LIMIT&count_limit=10&sort_by=postdate_desc&feed_type=RSS2.0&feed_style=HTML"; Response.Write("mibuso Feeds<br />"); GetFeed(rssUrl); %> </div> </form> </body> </html>
Here we assume, that the above C# function is called GetFeed. This function must be added in a script section and can afterwards be called from the body section.
Next you place the asp.net page on the internet server. When calling it – you should get a result like this:

That’s all, now you have a ASP.Net page, that collects the feeds and show the title.