rss

rss is a Rust library for reading and writing the RSS web content syndication format. It can deserialize channels from RSS 0.90 through 2.0 and serialize RSS 2.0 output, working over any source that implements BufRead. The crate models the full RSS data structure, supports common extensions such as iTunes, Dublin Core, and Atom, and offers optional builder, validation, and serde-integration features.

What You Get

• A typed Channel model with items, categories, enclosures, images, and more
• Reading support for RSS versions 0.90, 0.91, 0.92, 1.0, and 2.0
• RSS 2.0 serialization to XML via a write_to method
• Extension support for iTunes, Dublin Core, Atom, and syndication modules
• Optional builder, validation, and serde-integration feature flags

Common Use Cases

• Parsing podcast or blog RSS feeds into typed Rust structures
• Generating RSS 2.0 feeds from application content
• Reading iTunes podcast metadata from syndicated feeds

Under The Hood

Architecture

The data model lives in files like src/channel.rs, src/item.rs, src/category.rs, src/enclosure.rs, src/image.rs, and src/guid.rs, each a typed struct with reading and writing logic. src/toxml.rs and src/util.rs centralize XML serialization helpers, src/error.rs defines the error type, and the src/extension module implements namespaced extensions for Atom, Dublin Core, iTunes, and syndication modules. Reading and writing are driven by the quick-xml event stream.

Tech Stack

It targets Rust edition 2021 and builds on quick-xml 0.41 with encoding support for parsing and emitting XML. Optional features layer in atom_syndication, derive_builder for typed builders, chrono, url, and mime for validation, and serde for serialization, so the dependency surface scales with the features you enable.

Code Quality

The crate has an established test suite under tests/ covering both read and write paths with sample data, plus benches under benches/ and clippy and rustfmt configuration. With hundreds of stars and a long release history culminating in a 2.1.0 release, it is a mature, actively maintained project with disciplined tooling.

API Design

The public API is discoverable: Channel::read_from parses feeds and write_to serializes them, while builder types (behind a feature flag) offer an ergonomic construction path. Extensive docs.rs documentation and README examples for files, buffers, and HTTP fetching make it straightforward to get productive, with feature flags clearly delineating optional capabilities.