Example 2 - generating an RSS feed from a page using existing HTML markup on the page

This example shows you how to generate an RSS feed from a page using existing HTML markup on the page

This example shows the use of existing HTML markup on the page to identify the feed items.

The following box shows some of the HTML for the examples.htm page on this site:

<h1>Tutorial</h1>
<h2>Introduction</h2>
<p>You have three options open to you, depending on whether you can edit the 
HTML on the target page, and depending on whether you are familiar with Regular 
Expression syntax.</p>
<!-- start feed -->
<!-- start item -->
<h2><a href="example1.htm">Example 1</a></h2>
<!-- start description -->
<p>This is an example of generating a feed from your own page by 
inserting HTML comments to identify feed items.</p>
<p>This is the easiest method of converting your own web pages.</p>
<!-- end description -->
<!-- end item -->

<!-- start item --> 
<h2><a href="example2.htm">Example 2</a></h2> 
<!-- start description --> 
<p>This is an example of generating a feed from a page using existing 
HTML tags on the page to identify feed items.</p> 
<!-- end description --> 
<!-- end item -->

<!-- start item --> 
<h2><a href="example3.htm">Example 3</a></h2> 
<!-- start description --> 
<p>This is an example of generating a feed from your own page using some 
regular expression syntax to identify feed items.</p> 
<!-- end description --> 
<!-- end item -->

In this example the H2 heading "Introduction" is used to mark the start of the feed items. RSSxl will then look for the first instance of the Start and End Item Strings after that. The <h2> and </p> tags are used to identify the start and end of each item. Note that each RSS feed item is therefore terminated by the first </p> tag, and the second paragraph of the first item is omitted from the feed. (Example 3 shows a way round this using regular Expression Syntax.) The "Start Description String" and "End Description String" have been left blank, because RSSxl will automatically split each item into a Title and Description based on the page layout. In the RSSxl tool, type in the following parameters:

Note that in this example the "Start String" cannot left blank, because the introduction on the page would also match the "Start Item String" and "End Item String" and create an additional feed item.

Page URL =	http://www.wotzwot.com/examples.htm
Start String =	<h2>Introduction</h2>
Start Item String =	<h2>
End Item String =	</p>
Start Description String =
End Description String =