Comments on: Educating Kent: The Single RSS Enclosure Thing

By: Kent

Kent — Wed, 11 Jul 2007 05:44:00 +0000

Yeah, I’m a little confused by the profile.I get why a podcast ought to have a single enclosure, so it can be correctly named and categorized, etc.But it seems to me that multiple audio files in a single post ought to somehow be treated equally- the effect of what I mean by that is that they would all be playable like the first one from within a feed. Granted, there may be no way to distinguish a podcast from an audio file within a post.But in this day where everything is about pushing media, it seems inevitable to me, as a publisher and end user, that multiple audio files will need to be addressed.

By: Jackson Miller

Jackson Miller — Wed, 11 Jul 2007 01:48:00 +0000

An RSS “feed” can have multiple enclosures. An RSS feed is made up of “items”, it makes sense for an “item” to have a single enclosure. Multiple enclosures would be multiple items.The issue might be that people are thinking about enclosures as attachments like in an email. However, when thinking about enclosures with something like a podcast feed, each audio file is a separate item, and thus a separate item in the feed.

By: Rogers

Rogers — Tue, 10 Jul 2007 16:01:00 +0000

The long answer is in the profile, but the short version is that the intent in RSS 2.0 was for a one-to-one relationship between RSS items and enclosures, so the item title and description could be assumed to describe the enclosure.

By: Randy Charles Morin

Randy Charles Morin — Tue, 10 Jul 2007 15:42:00 +0000

Basically it’s how the spec was written. enclosures were said to be optional.

By: Kent

Kent — Tue, 10 Jul 2007 13:50:00 +0000

Maybe it’s not RSS, but something in a feed takes the first audio file it finds and adds a play button at the bottom of the feed to play it. It’s always the first audio file in the post.What I’m wondering about is why that can’t be done with all the audio files.There was discussion in the Feedburner forums that indicated it was a RSS standards thing.

By: Mike

Mike — Tue, 10 Jul 2007 12:09:00 +0000

I’m not sure it is really an rss thing. If you look at the html on the original post, it is just an “a” tag linking directly to an mp3 file. Then there is some magic javascript from del.icio.us that adds the autoplay ability. I don’t think Javascript code carries over to the rss feed code.