README

A CakePHP plugin containing RssView and AtomView classes for generating RSS 2.0 and Atom 1.0 feeds.

Version notice

This branch is for use with CakePHP 5.1+. See version map for details.

What is this plugin for?

There used to be a core helper for RSS generation, but it had several deficiencies. It also was removed in 4.0. So this plugin aims to provide a better support for feed generation — both RSS 2.0 (the de-facto standard, still required for podcasting) and Atom 1.0 (the cleaner, stricter successor preferred for most modern feeds).

Goals of these view classes

• Support view-less actions via serialize.
• Get rid of the ridiculously verbose "inline" namespace declarations.
• Simplify the use of namespaces and their prefixes (auto-add only those that are actually used).
• Support CDATA (unescaped content).
• Allow mini-templating where necessary.
• Accept friendly shorthands for the common case (bare strings for link, author, category) while leaving the full attribute shape available for power use.

RSS vs Atom: which one?

• RSS 2.0 if you publish a podcast. Apple Podcasts and the rest of that ecosystem require RSS plus the itunes: namespace. Also pick RSS if you have a specific reason to target the long tail of RSS-only readers.
• Atom 1.0 for almost anything else. Unambiguous date semantics (separate <published> and <updated>), typed content (text/html/xhtml), structured <author> with <name>/<email>/<uri>, multiple <link rel> per entry, mandatory <id> for proper deduplication. Most modern feed readers parse both equally well, and Atom is strictly less ambiguous.
• Both, if you're not sure. Each view class is small; emitting /feed.rss and /feed.atom from the same controller action is a few extra lines.

Additional features

• Automatic View class mapping via rss and atom extensions.

See my article for details on the history of this view class.

Demo

https://sandbox.dereuromark.de/sandbox/feed-examples

Installation & Docs

• Documentation

Possible TODOs

• Maybe add Feed readers instead of just writers.