EUROPEAN COMMISSION EUROSTAT Directorate B: Statistical methods and tools; Dissemination Unit B-6: Dissemination Guidelines for sharing of ESS news across NSI websites using RSS Author: Chris Laevaert Version 1.2 August 2006 Commission européenne, L-2920 Luxembourg. Telephone: (352) 43 01-1. http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/
1. INTRODUCTION In the framework of the Member States' cooperation on internet, one of the projects concerns the sharing of ESS news across the NSI websites. The objective is to better integrate the NSI websites by allowing users to stay informed on the latest news from the various NSIs without having to connect to different sites. The issue was intensively discussed during the Dissemination Working Groups of 2005 and 2006. RSS being a widely used means on the Internet to distribute news headlines and content in a completely automated fashion, it was decided to use RSS technology to build this service. This document compiles some general guidelines on how to implement RSS feeds. 2. RESPONSIBILITIES Each organisation is fully responsible for: (1) The news to be placed in the service; (2) Wording and presentation of the text; (3) All linguistic aspects, i.e. the formulations in English; (4) The presentation of the messages on their respective web sites. The presentation style can be freely taken to fit the general Internet style of the NSI. Nevertheless effort should be made in order to try to streamline the presentation and avoid big discrepancies. (5) Each participating organisation defines the messages it wants to share. Messages may contain information on statistics as well as other types of information. It has been agreed not to limit the scope of the messages. (6) Decisions on the treatment of older messages, e.g. the time messages are kept online, whether older messages are archived and accessible by users should be made by each individual NSI. 3. WHAT IS RSS? RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication or Rich Site Summary, a text format, written in XML, which serves to distribute news headlines and content on the Internet in a completely automated fashion. It is a very effective and easy way of keeping up-to-date with the latest headlines from different websites. It allows you to identify the content you are interested in and have the very latest information on these topics delivered directly to you. Rather than visit our site to see if new content has been added, RSS will alert you when new information has been added and will deliver it directly to you. By using this service you will receive a notice with the news headline at the same time as it is published on the originating website. 2
For a comprehensive overview of what RSS is and does please consult http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/rss_(protocol). You will also find a lot of useful links on this page. 4. RECOMMENDATIONS 4.1. Version The Dissemination Working Group recommended to use version 2.0 of RSS. Using version 0.90, 1.0 or 1.1 can lead to incompatibilities. 4.2. XML specifications An RSS feed contains elements and sub-elements. In order to simplify the creation of the RSS feeds, the mandatory information will be reduced to the strict minimum. The mandatory elements are described below. 4.2.1. single <rss> element This element has a mandatory attribute called version. Example: <rss version="2.0"> 4.2.2. single <channel> element The single <channel> element, which is subordinate to the <rss> element, contains information (metadata) about the channel and its contents. The mandatory items of the <channel> element are: (1) <title> The name of the channel, it's how people refer to your service example: <title>eurostat News Releases</title> (2) <link> The URL to the website corresponding to the channel example: <link>http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat</link> (3) <description> A sentence describing the channel example: <description>this feed contains the latest Eurostat News Releases</description > (4) <language> The language the channel is written in example: <language >en-en</language > (5) <pubdate> The publication date for the content in the channel. Dates and times have to conform to the specifications of RFC 822. (http://asg.web.cmu.edu/rfc/rfc822.html) The year may be expressed with four characters. example: <pubdate >Tue, 25 Jul 2006 11:01:01 +0100</pubdate> 3
4.2.3. single <image> sub-element This element is subordinate to the <channel> element and contains the following mandatory elements: (1) <url> The url to the corresponding logo of the NSI example: <url>http://www.scb.se/images/scb_logotyp.gif</url> Ideally the gif should not exceed 100 x 60 pixels. (2) <title> describes the image, used in the ALT tag attribute of html example: <title> Statistics from SCB</title> (3) <link> is the url to the site when the channel is rendered, the image is a link to the site. In practice the image <title> and <link> should have the same values as the channel's <title> and <link> 4.2.4. any number of <item> sub-elements 4.3. Validation The <item> sub-element is subordinate to the <channel> element. A channel may contain any number of <item> sub-elements. Each <item> sub-element contains a message or news to be shared. It contains the following mandatory items: (1) <title> The title of the message, press release or publication example: <title>eu25 current account deficit 36.7 bn euro</title> (2) <description> One or two sentences giving a short description of the item (3) <pubdate> The date the item was published. Dates and times have to conform to the specifications of RFC 822. (http://asg.web.cmu.edu/rfc/rfc822.html) The year may be expressed with four characters. (4) <link> The url link to the item on the originating website example: <link>http://epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/pls/portal/docs/page/ PGP_PRD_CAT_PREREL/PGE_CAT_PREREL_YEAR_20 06/PGE_CAT_PREREL_YEAR_2006_MONTH_07/2-25072006-EN-AP.PDF</link> Once you've created your RSS feed you can easily test and validate whether it is conformant to the standard at the following address: http://www.feedvalidator.org/ 4
5. RSS FEEDS ON EUROSTAT WEBSITE If your feed is working, you only need to send an email to Eurostat (christiaan.laevaert@ec.europa.eu) with the URL address of your RSS feed and it will be added on to the RSS page on the Eurostat website. The webpage containing the News feeds from the various NSI can be found at the following address http://epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/pls/portal/url/page/pgp_rss 6. EXAMPLE OF RSS FEED <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> - <rss version="2.0"> - <channel> <title>eurostat News releases</title> <link>http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat</link> <description>this feed contains the latest Eurostat News releases</description> <language>en-en</language> <copyright>eurostat</copyright> <pubdate>tue, 01 Aug 2006 11:01:01 +0100</pubDate> <lastbuilddate>tue, 01 Aug 2006 11:01:01 +0100</lastBuildDate> <category>press Releases</category> - <image> <url>http://epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/site3img/pgp_adm_images/pge_gen_i MG/OSCELOGO.GIF</url> <link>http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat</link> <title>eurostat Press Releases</title> </image> <title>euro area unemployment down to 7.8%</title> <description>euro area seasonally-adjusted unemployment stood at 7.8% in June 2006, compared to 7.9% in May. It was 8.6% in June 2005. The EU25 unemployment rate was 8.1% in June 2006, compared to 8.2% in May. It was 8.8% in June 2005.</description> <pubdate>tue, 01 Aug 2006 11:00:00 +0100</pubDate> TH_08/3-01082006-EN-AP.PDF</link> <title>euro area inflation estimated at 2.5%</title> <description>euro area annual inflation is expected to be 2.5% in July 2006 according to a flash estimate issued by Eurostat, the Statistical Office of the European Communities. It was 2.5% in June.</description> <pubdate>mon, 31 Jul 2006 11:00:00 +0100</pubDate> 5
TH_07/2-31072006-EN-AP.PDF</link> <title>eu25 current account deficit 36.7 bn euro</title> <description>according to the latest revisions, the EU25 external current account recorded a deficit of 36.7 billion euro in the first quarter of 2006, as compared to a deficit of 17.1 bn in the first quarter of 2005 and a deficit of 29.1 bn in the fourth quarter of 2005.</description> <pubdate>tue, 25 Jul 2006 11:00:00 +0100</pubDate> TH_07/2-25072006-EN-AP.PDF</link> <title>industrial new orders up by 2.3% in euro area</title> <description>the euro area industrial new orders index increased by 2.3% in May 2006 compared to April 2006. The index decreased by 0.8% in April and 1.3% in March. EU25 new orders rose by 1.5% in May 2006, after remaining stable in April and falling by 1.1% in March. Excluding ships, railway and aerospace equipment, industrial new orders grew by 1.9% in May 2006 in the euro area and by 1.4% in the EU25.</description> <pubdate>mon, 24 Jul 2006 11:00:00 +0100</pubDate> TH_07/4-24072006-EN-AP.PDF</link> <title>europeans on holiday - A preference for domestic holidays, but not in all Member States</title> <description>in the EU25, in 2004, 57% of holiday trips of four nights or more were domestic made within a country. Outbound trips those made in other countries acounted for 43% of holiday trips, of which two-thirds were taken in other Member States of the EU25, and one third outside the EU25. The most popular mode of transport was private car (58% of trips), followed by air (25%), rail and coach (8% each).</description> <pubdate>thu, 20 Jul 2006 11:00:00 +0100</pubDate> TH_07/4-20072006-EN-AP.PDF</link> <title>euro area external trade deficit 3.2 bn euro</title> <description>the first estimate for the euro area trade balance with the rest of the 6
world in May 2006 gave a 3.2 bn euro deficit against a 2.3 bn surplus in May 2005. The April 2006 balance was -1.9 bn euro, compared with +1.6 bn in April 2005. In May 2006 compared with April 2006, exports, seasonally adjusted, rose by 1.2% and imports by 1.4%.</description> <pubdate>wed, 19 Jul 2006 11:00:00 +0100</pubDate> TH_07/6-19072006-EN-AP.PDF</link> </channel> </rss> 7