The feed URI scheme was a suggested
uniform resource identifier (URI) scheme designed to facilitate subscription to
web feeds; specifically, it was intended that a
news aggregator be launched whenever a
hyperlink to a feed
URI was clicked in a
web browser.
The scheme was intended to flag a document in a syndication format such as
Atom or
RSS. The document would be typically served over
HTTP.
In 2006 the feed
URI scheme was supported by several popular desktop aggregators, including
NetNewsWire, FeedDemon,
Safari, and
Flock. As of 2011
[update] no effort seems to be underway to officially register the scheme at
IANA.
[1]
Critics hold that the purpose of the feed
URI scheme is better served by
MIME types,
[2] or that it is not a user-friendly solution for the problem of feed subscription, since a user who has not installed the appropriate software will receive an unhelpful browser error message on clicking a link to a feed
URI.
The feed
URI scheme was suggested in 2003
[3] in draft-obasanjo-feed-URI-scheme-01 and 02. These expired drafts were not submitted as
Internet drafts; the author later contributed to the work on the
atom standard.
The syntax for a feed
URI may be expressed in
Backus–Naur form as follows:
<feed_uri> ::= "feed:" <absolute_uri> | "feed://" <authority> <path-abempty>
Specifically, a feed
URI may be formed from any absolute URI (such as an absolute
URL) by prepending feed
, and as a special case, may be formed from any absolute
http
URI by replacing the initial http://
with feed://
.
The <authority> and <path-abempty> constructs in the syntax are specified in RFC 3986 also known as
STD 66. Here <authority> is in essence the userinfo@host:port part of the original http
URI, and <path-abempty> is the following absolute path introduced by a slash "/"; it can be empty or absent. Therefore, the following are two examples of valid feed
URIs:
feed:https://example.com/entries.atom feed://example.com/entries.atom
The feed URI scheme was a suggested
uniform resource identifier (URI) scheme designed to facilitate subscription to
web feeds; specifically, it was intended that a
news aggregator be launched whenever a
hyperlink to a feed
URI was clicked in a
web browser.
The scheme was intended to flag a document in a syndication format such as
Atom or
RSS. The document would be typically served over
HTTP.
In 2006 the feed
URI scheme was supported by several popular desktop aggregators, including
NetNewsWire, FeedDemon,
Safari, and
Flock. As of 2011
[update] no effort seems to be underway to officially register the scheme at
IANA.
[1]
Critics hold that the purpose of the feed
URI scheme is better served by
MIME types,
[2] or that it is not a user-friendly solution for the problem of feed subscription, since a user who has not installed the appropriate software will receive an unhelpful browser error message on clicking a link to a feed
URI.
The feed
URI scheme was suggested in 2003
[3] in draft-obasanjo-feed-URI-scheme-01 and 02. These expired drafts were not submitted as
Internet drafts; the author later contributed to the work on the
atom standard.
The syntax for a feed
URI may be expressed in
Backus–Naur form as follows:
<feed_uri> ::= "feed:" <absolute_uri> | "feed://" <authority> <path-abempty>
Specifically, a feed
URI may be formed from any absolute URI (such as an absolute
URL) by prepending feed
, and as a special case, may be formed from any absolute
http
URI by replacing the initial http://
with feed://
.
The <authority> and <path-abempty> constructs in the syntax are specified in RFC 3986 also known as
STD 66. Here <authority> is in essence the userinfo@host:port part of the original http
URI, and <path-abempty> is the following absolute path introduced by a slash "/"; it can be empty or absent. Therefore, the following are two examples of valid feed
URIs:
feed:https://example.com/entries.atom feed://example.com/entries.atom