In the early days of RSS, we had the idea that instantaneous updates would be the next step. #

That was 2001. It took a little longer than we thought, but now with "realtime" as the Next Big Thing, it's time to reboot all that stuff. #

This is where I'll document my efforts.#

Dave Winer
August 2020#

I used to maintain an rssCloud server, but as of August 2020, Andrew Shell is doing that. #

He's also publishing an open source rssCloud server in Node.js, so you can run your own server as well.#

The first rssClouds were implemented in 2001 in Manila and Radio UserLand, two products from my company, UserLand Software. All three sides of the protocol were implemented. #

In 2002, we spun out the server side into an open source release called Radio Community Server, which had other functions that supported communities of Radio users. We operated two such communities, one for our own users, and one in partnership with Salon. A bunch of leading weblogs came out of these services. #

The aggregator in Radio UserLand would receive instant updates of feeds of other members of these communities, but not many people noticed. We also had the equivalent of Twitter's "retweet" (that's why the <source> element was added, so the feed would link back to the originator, a feature that Twitter doesn't have). #

In any case, polling became the norm, and the cloud functionality didn't get much use outside of our communities.#

Scripting.com: January 6, 2001.#

Two-way Web: SOAP Meets RSS. (2001)#

Backend.UserLand.com: RSS 0.92 spec. (2001)#

Harvard: RSS 2.0 spec. (2003)#

Harvard: SOAP Meets RSS. (2007)#

rssCloud: Implementor's Guide. (2009)#

You bet!#

Just define a namespace to have a single element in it, the <cloud> element from RSS 2.0. #

If you need a URL for the namespace, please consider using the URL for this site. #

Namespaces make ideas portable, and not specific to any format, and don't lock anyone in or out. #

Per Daniel Berlinger's question in a comment, there is a REST interface coming out of the rssCloud interface. It's mentioned both in the RSS 2.0 spec and in SOAP Meets RSS. #

However two details are not included in the description, so I've had to fill them in, in my implementation of rssCloud.#

0. The method is (of course) POST.#

1. It takes a single parameter named url, whose value is the address of the feed that updated. (The spec didn't provide the name of the parameter.)#

2. The returned value is ignored, as with the returned value of the XML-RPC and SOAP notifications. (The spec didn't explicitly say the returned parameter is ignored.)#

I've got a sample handler running at: http://rpc.rsscloud.co:5337/rsscloud/postUpdate. If you call it as described above it returns Thanks for the post.#