Adobe Appcasting Namespace Extension - Adobe Developer Desktop Documentation

Appcasting RSS Module - RSS 2.0 Module

"Appcasting RSS" Specification Version 0.1.0

An RSS module that supplements the <enclosure> element capabilites of RSS 2.0 to allow for application/software syndication.

Change Notes

07/17/2007 - Created (0.1.0)

Namespace declaration

The namespace for Appcasting RSS is defined to be: http://www.adobe.com/xml-namespaces/appcast/1.0

For example:

<rss version="2.0" xmlns:appcast="http://www.adobe.com/xml-namespaces/appcast/1.0">

Description

"Appcasting RSS" is a new RSS module that supplements the enclosure capabilites of RSS 2.0. The "Appcasting RSS" module extension can be used to provide additional metadata assoicated with software binaries/packages specified in the RSS enclosures. Appcasting RSS enables software publishers to syndicate software binaries/packages such as application binaries, library components, and software updates.

Primary Elements

The "Appcasting RSS" module does not specify any required primary elements.

Optional Elements

The following elements are optional and may appear as sub-elements of <item>.

<appcast:version>

The version number of the enclosed application/library component.

<appcast:version>2.1.0</appcast:version>

<appcast:author>

The author of the enclosed application/library component. It has 2 optional attributes.

<appcast:author url="http://JohnDoe.com/blog/" email="john@johndoe.com">John Doe</appcast:author>

url indicates the website URL of the author.
email indicates the email address of the author.

<appcast:shortDescription>

Short description describing the application/library component typically a sentence in length. It has 1 optional attribute.

<appcast:shortDescription type="plain">This is a datagrid component with drag/drop animation.</appcast:shortDescription>

type specifies the type of text embedded. Possible values are either 'plain' or 'html'. Default value is 'plain'. All html must be entity-encoded. It is an optional attribute.

<appcast:license>

License information for enclosed application/library component. It has 1 optional attribute.

<appcast:license url="http://example.com/license-info.html">BSD</appcast:license>

url is the url for a page with additional license information.

<appcast:hash>

Hash value of the enclosed application/library component. It can appear multiple times as long as each instance is a different algo. It has 1 optional attribute.

<appcast:hash algo="md5">a297aebb68e137682fa72e3f3325cd1d</appcast:hash>

algo indicates the algorithm used to create the hash. Possible values are 'md5' and 'sha-1'. Default value is 'md5'.

<appcast:rating>

Rating value of the enclosed application/library component. Possible values are numbers between 0 to 5. It has 1 optional attribute.

<appcast:rating votes="47">4</appcast:rating>

votes indicates the number of votes total.

<appcast:downloadCount>

Number of total downloads for the enclosed application/library component.

<appcast:downloadCount>456</appcast:downloadCount>

<appcast:keywords>

Highly relevant keywords describing the enclosed application/library component with typically a maximum of ten words. The keywords and phrases should be comma delimited.

<appcast:keywords>log, debug, util, tool</appcast:keywords>

<appcast:docsLink>

The url of the document page for the enclosed application/library component.

<appcast:docsLink>http://www.example.com/exampleApp/docs.html</appcast:docsLink>

<appcast:sourcesLink>

The url of the sources page for the enclosed application/library component.

<appcast:sourcesLink>http://www.example.com/exampleApp/sources.html</appcast:sourcesLink>

<appcast:previewLink>

The url of the preview page for the enclosed application/library component.

<appcast:previewLink>http://www.example.com/exampleApp/preview.html</appcast:previewLink>

Examples

A Flex library component with additional "Appcasting RSS" software metadata including version, document link and license information.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<rss version="2.0" xmlns:appcast="http://www.adobe.com/xml-namespaces/appcast/1.0">
   <channel>
      <title>Appcasting Sample Feed</title>
      <link>http://www.example.com/</link>
      <description>Appcast Sample Feed</description>
      <item>
	  <title>as3corelib</title>
	  <link>http://code.google.com/p/as3corelib/</link>
	  <description>The corelib project is an ActionScript 3 Library that contains a number of classes and utilities for working with ActionScript 3. These include classes for MD5 and SHA 1 hashing, Image encoders, and JSON serialization as well as general String, Number and Date APIs.</description>
	  <pubDate>Sat, 27 May 2007 11:32:41 GMT</pubDate>
	  <guid>http://code.google.com/p/as3corelib/</guid>
          <category>Utility</category>
	  <appcast:version>0.90</appcast:version>
	  <appcast:license url="http://www.opensource.org/licenses/bsd-license.php">BSD</appcast:license>
	  <appcast:hash algo="md5">a297aebb68e137682fa72e3f3325cd1d</appcast:hash>
	  <appcast:previewLink>http://code.google.com/p/as3corelib/preview.html</appcast:previewLink>
	  <appcast:sourcesLink>http://code.google.com/p/as3corelib/sources.html</appcast:sourcesLink>
	  <appcast:docsLink>http://code.google.com/p/as3corelib/docs.html</appcast:docsLink>
	  <enclosure url="http://as3corelib.googlecode.com/files/corelib-.90.zip" length="1101202" type="application/octet-stream" />
     </item>
   </channel>
</rss>