Consume an RSS Feed with .NET 3.5

.NET 3.5 added some new classes that really help when dealing with RSS/ATOM feeds.  These classes are located in the System.ServiceModel.Syndication namespace in the System.ServiceModel.Web.dll library.  The SyndicationFeed class in this namespace can be used to both expose and consume a feed.

Today I was attempting to create a clone of my feed on a website that I am toying around with.  After doing some research on the System.ServiceModel.Syndication namespace, I found that this is extremely simple to do in 3.5.  The following code illustrates just how simple it can be by using the static Load method of SyndicationFeed:

    1: // Blog feed

    2: SyndicationFeed blogFeed;

    3: try

    4: {

    5:     // Read the feed using an XmlReader

    6:     using (XmlReader reader = XmlReader.Create("https://someblog/feed.xml");

    7:     {

    8:         // Load the feed into a SyndicationFeed

    9:         blogFeed = SyndicationFeed.Load(reader);

   10:     }

   11: }

   12: catch (Exception ex)

   13: {

   14:     if (ex is WebException || ex is XmlException)

   15:     {

   16:         // Handle bad url, timeout or xml error here.

   17:     }

   18:     else

   19:         throw;

   20: }

   21:  

   22: // Use the feed

   23: foreach (SyndicationItem item in blogFeed.Items)

   24: {

   25:     Console.WriteLine(item.Title.Text);

   26: }