Is RSS file name extension important?

[fabrizio]

Hello here,
I am working to implement syndication on my site as more efficiently as possible by implementing the RSS 2.0 protocol:

<rss version="2.0" xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/">

and I was wondering if it is better to stick with .rss or .xml extensions for RSS files or any extension can work just fine? Or, also as I can see here on SitePoint, can I just point the RSS to a PHP script?

In other words, are the following RSS calls all correct and safe for a RSS 2.0 feed?

http://mysite.com/news.rss
http://mysite.com/news.xml
http://mysite.com/news.html
http://mysite.com/news.php?id=1


Thank you for any thoughts in advance!

Best,
Fab.

[corbyboy]

Any application that is going to parse the feed should not be checking the file extension.

Whatever extension you call it should be fine, so long as it returns properly formatted XML.

You have pretty much proved the point with the Sitepoint example.

[fabrizio]

Thank you so much, I just needed a confirmation to my doubts

Thanks!

Best,
Fab.

[AlexDawson]

While I agree with the above the defacto standard for RSS since version 2.0 is the XML extension (as it is widely accepted within browsers, especially as RSS files are natively XML documents anyway). While .rss can still be used I would probably go with XML purely out of it being a more universally standardised format.

PS: If you are trying to implement your syndication more effectively have you also considered adding an atom feed to your website? Atom is another syndication format which is as widely recognised as RSS (with additional useful elements). Generally people use both RSS and Atom so that the visitor can use their preference.

Atom: http://www.atomenabled.org/developers/syndication/

[fabrizio]

Of course, I am considering Atom also. Thank you for your suggestions, I will take care of them. Really appreciated Alex!

Best,
Fabrizio

[badams67]

The file extension will matter if your RSS file is static, since your web server, will use the
extension to guess what mime-type to return, which should be "application/rss+xml". This come from a row in your servers mime-type file reading.

application/rss+xml rss

RSS Feeds are often generated automatically, and in that case the extension doesn't matter. And the mime-type line "application/rss+xml" in the HTTP header should be generated by the script.

[fabrizio]

Yes, that's my case: the rss is generated by a PHP script but I was able to use the .rss extension anyway. Here it is:

http://www.virtualsheetmusic.com/news.rss


Thank you!

Best,
Fab.