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RSS enclosure

Pointer to a media file from a web feed

RSS enclosures are a way of attaching multimedia content to RSS feeds with the purpose of allowing that content to be prefetched. Enclosures provide the URL of a file associated with an entry, such as an MP3 file to a music recommendation or a photo to a diary entry. Unlike e-mail attachments, enclosures are merely hyperlinks to files. The actual file data is not embedded into the feed (unless a data URL is used). Support and implementation among aggregators varies: if the software understands the specified file format, it may automatically download and display the content, otherwise provide a link to it or silently ignore it.

The addition of enclosures to RSS, as first implemented by Dave Winer in late 2000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092, was an important prerequisite for the emergence of podcasting, perhaps the most common use of the feature . In podcasts and related technologies enclosures are not merely attachments to entries, but provide the main content of a feed.

Syntax

In RSS 2.0, the syntax for the tag, an optional child of the element, is as follows:

<enclosure url="http://example.com/file.mp3" length="123456789" type="audio/mpeg" /></syntaxhighlight>
where the value of the ''url'' attribute is a [[Uniform Resource Locator|URL]] of a file, ''length'' is its size in [[byte]]s, and ''type'' its [[mime type]].

It is recommended that only one <enclosure> element is included per <nowiki><item></nowiki>.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.rssboard.org/rss-profile#element-channel-item-enclosure|title=RSS Best Practices Profile|website=Rssboard.org|access-date=1 October 2017}}</ref>

== Prefetching ==

The RSS &lt;enclosure&gt; has similarities to:
* the [[Synchronized Multimedia Integration Language|SMIL]] &lt;prefetch&gt; element,
* the [[HTML]] &lt;link&gt; element with rel="prefetch".[https://www.mozilla.org/projects/netlib/Link_Prefetching_FAQ.html]
* the [[HTTP]] Link header with rel="prefetch".  (See {{IETF RFC|2068}} section 19.6.2.4.)
* the [[Atom (standard)|Atom]] &lt;link&gt; element with rel="enclosure"

== See also ==
* [[Broadcatching]]
* [[Internet television]]
* [[Podcast]]
* [[Photofeed]]
* [[Vlog]]

==References==

== External links ==
* [http://www.rssboard.org/rss-specification#ltenclosuregtSubelementOfLtitemgt The <enclosure> tag in the RSS 2.0 specification]
* [http://www.xs4all.nl/~foz/mod_enclosure.html mod_enclosure] - Enclosures in RSS 1.x
* [https://www.rssboard.org/rss-enclosures-use-case Enclosure intended use case]


[[Category:RSS]]
[[Category:Web syndication formats]]
[[Category:XML-based standards]]

References

Info: Wikipedia Source

This article was imported from Wikipedia and is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Content has been adapted to SurfDoc format. Original contributors can be found on the article history page.

rss web-syndication-formats xml-based-standards

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