# Generating an Atom Feed?

**URL:** <https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/generating-an-atom-feed/60051>\
**Category:** Ruby\
**Created:** [May 9, 2006, 7:51pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/generating-an-atom-feed/60051 "2006-05-09T19:51:03Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![nko](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/n/91b2a8/32.png) [@nko](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/nko)\
**Post date:** [May 9, 2006, 7:51pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/generating-an-atom-feed/60051/1 "2006-05-09T19:51:03Z")

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Does anyone know of a library for generating an Atom feed? I’ve looked  
around, but can only seem to find parsers, not generators.

I don’t imagine it’d be hard to hack up the code to do this in pure  
Ruby, but if there’s an existing library, I’d like to use it.

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![nko](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/n/91b2a8/32.png) [@nko](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/nko)\
**Post date:** [May 9, 2006, 8:31pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/generating-an-atom-feed/60051/2 "2006-05-09T20:31:06Z")

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Nathan O. wrote:

> Does anyone know of a library for generating an Atom feed? I’ve looked  
> around, but can only seem to find parsers, not generators.

feedtools can generate and parse atom feeds.

[http://sporkmonger.com/projects/feedtools/](http://sporkmonger.com/projects/feedtools/)

–

Ray

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![nko](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/n/91b2a8/32.png) [@nko](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/nko)\
**Post date:** [May 10, 2006, 3:04pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/generating-an-atom-feed/60051/3 "2006-05-10T15:04:48Z")

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On Wed, 10 May 2006 02:51:12 +0900, you wrote:

> Does anyone know of a library for generating an Atom feed? I’ve looked  
> around, but can only seem to find parsers, not generators.

i ran into the same problem when i wrote tkblog (tck/tk) and i wanted  
to create an rss feed. found parsers but no generators

> I don’t imagine it’d be hard to hack up the code to do this in pure  
> Ruby, but if there’s an existing library, I’d like to use it.

that’s exactly what i did in tcl. i’m guessing the ruby code would be  
a lot more efficient than what i did. probalby less than 20 lines of  
code.

there was a big advantage when writing it by brute force. i learned  
that the rss standard wasn’t. but because it was my own code i could  
change it as the standard changed 🙂 and when i was done i had my own  
tcl extension.

the major disadvantage was that the rss standard was all over the  
place. i spent hours trying to track down the “real” standard. while  
writing the code i tested a boatload of rss feed readers. some where  
very forgiving of the “standard” and some were very strict.

this was a few years ago so it’s entirely possible it’s since been  
ratified or whatever they do to nail down a standard to only a few  
versions 🙂

[http://home.cogeco.ca/~tsummerfelt1](http://home.cogeco.ca/~tsummerfelt1)  
telnet://ventedspleen.dyndns.org