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RSS is not an API, though. It's another content type like HTML, typically XML, but in a specific format that makes it easier for programs to consume. Generatin
by imiric 1y ago
RSS is not an API, though. It's another content type like HTML, typically XML, but in a specific format that makes it easier for programs to consume.
Generating it is trivial in most web frameworks and CMSs, and sites that don't offer it either never bothered to set it up, or actively choose not to. This is hardly a fault of RSS itself.
What you suggest as a successor is a workaround for such sites, not something that should be the norm.
- hombre_fatal 1y agoSo RSS isn't an API because it returns XML instead of JSON or protobufs? That doesn't sound right. It's an endpoint for machine consumption and that's what most people mean when they refer to an API. But that's a distraction from the point. It's trivial to implement an RSS endpoint, but what's not trivial is requiring everyone to implement it. Needing someone to implement an API just to have machine-friendly pull access to their latest content is only a trade-off that made sense last decade. It's not a good solution if you had the power of generating feeds yourself.