WPF RSS Reader

RSS stands for “Real Simple
Syndication” and is used for publishing updates of frequently updated content.
It is a concept that allows syndication of content between two places.

RSS is used in a significantly
large amount of industries from banks to publishers, businesses to news, and
many more. RSS files are XML based files that contain formatted plain text.The
beauty of RSS is that it can be used for any type of content. Simple alerts , podcasts
and videocasts are few examples. .

I was looking to build a light
version myself and Windows Presentation Foundation
(WPF)
was the primary candidate for the technology.

Let’s dive in.

There is a rich XmlDataProvider
class and a lighter but effective SyndicationFeed for you to
start with. There are many examples on XMLDataProvider
on the web; hence, I wanted to try the SyndicationFeed to create a quick RSS
reader. WPF lets you create one with ease within minutes.

The following items would be used
in this sample.

The Webclient can be used to
download the contents of a specified url. You can even utilize the asynchronous
implementation of the downloadstring method provided by this class to avoid
freezing your User interface components.

webClientInstance.DownloadStringAsync(new Uri(theURLString));

Once the webclient downloads the data, it
returns it as a string. We can use a stringreader to read the result. The
result is obtained from the DownloadStringAsync method call of the Webclient
instance.

StringReader stringReaderInstance = new StringReader(e.Result);

SyndicationFeed is a .Net inbuilt syndication class
that can be used to work with feeds. It has a set of helpful properties that
help you read the feed object effectively. Description, Authors, Copyright,
Items, Title are few helpful properties. The following code snippet shows you how
to read a webclient’s response to a syndication feed.

XmlReader reader                = XmlReader.Create(new StringReader(e.Result));
SyndicationFeed downloadFeed    = SyndicationFeed.Load(reader);

Every feed also provides some interesting stuff
like Image of the RSS feed provider. This can also be retrieved using the
syndication feed. The following code snippet shows you how to do that.

<Image x:Name="feedImage" Grid.Column="0" Stretch="Fill"></Image>
SyndicationFeed downloadFeed = SyndicationFeed.Load(reader);
BitmapImage bi = new BitmapImage();
bi.BeginInit();
bi.UriSource = new Uri(imageUrl, UriKind.RelativeOrAbsolute);
bi.EndInit();
feedImage.Source = bi;

The listbox is bound to the Summary, Title, and
PublishDate objects of the Syndication Feed Item. Following is the markup of
the listbox.

<ListBox Name="listBoxFeedItems" IsSynchronizedWithCurrentItem="True"
        ScrollViewer.CanContentScroll="True">
            <ListBox.ItemTemplate>
                <DataTemplate>
                    <StackPanel>
                        <StackPanel Orientation="Horizontal">
                            <Expander ExpandDirection="Right">
                                <TextBlock Text="{Binding Path=Summary.Text}"
                                    TextTrimming="WordEllipsis" />
                            </Expander>
                                    <TextBlock Text="{Binding Path=Title.Text}"
                                    ToolTip="{Binding Path=PublishDate.Date}"/>
                        </StackPanel>
                    </StackPanel>
                </DataTemplate>
            </ListBox.ItemTemplate>
</ListBox>

Incidentally
the more feeds I tried with SyndicationFeed, the more I found a new kind of
problem. All feeds do not follow the standard specifications. One such
non-standard item is the DateTime fields in the feed item. So you may end up
writing your own custom XML Reader that derives and enhances Xml Text Reader.

I found an
interesting post at the Microsoft connect, which solves this issue
and is
the way to go.

I hope you enjoyed the write-up. Thanks for
reading!

References:

XMLDataProvider

Syndication feed load fails to
Parse datetime

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