I'll also walk you through a concrete application of these techniques, where you'll write a simple class that publishes build results from a Continuum build server in RSS format. In this article, I'll show you how to manipulate RSS feeds in Java using the Rome (RSS and Atom utilities) API. The server publishes real-time build results in RSS format, which the client can then consult at any time without having to go to the server's Web site. End users simply subscribe to the CI server's feed in their RSS reader or RSS-enabled Web browser. Some development projects, for instance, use RSS feeds to monitor continuous integration build results.

Tools like Trac let you use RSS feeds to monitor changes made to a Subversion repository or to a project Web site, which can be a good way to easily keep tabs on the status of many projects simultaneously. RSS feeds also can be useful inside of a development project. For example, some applications use RSS feeds to inform users of changes to the application database that could affect them. Your application could need to publish information through a set of RSS feeds, or need to read, and possibly manipulate, RSS data from another source. A variety of application scenarios could require you to read, publish, or process RSS feeds from within your code. RSS feeds aren't just for end-users, though. Modern browsers such as Firefox, and more recently Internet Explorer 7, and mail clients such as Thunderbird recognize and support RSS feeds not to mention the a large number of dedicated RSS readers (also known as aggregators) out there. RSS (Really Simple Syndication) is an established way of publishing short snippets of information, such as news headlines, project releases, or blog entries. You'll also learn how to set up an RSS feed to deliver build reports in a continuous integration environment, using Continuum as your CI server. In this article John Ferguson Smart shows you how to use the Rome API to read and process RSS feeds in any format. The large number of individual formats (at least six flavors of RSS plus Atom) can make it difficult to manipulate the feeds by hand, however.

RSS is a widely used means of publishing syndicated content, from bloglines to build reports.

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