Introduction
Nowadays, RSS is a great features of web / windows platform as well. What is RSS?
RSS (Rich Site Summary) is a format for delivering regularly changing web content. Many news-related sites, weblogs and other online publishers syndicate their content as an RSS Feed to whoever wants it.
It allows you to easily stay informed by retrieving the latest content from the sites you are interested in. In this article, I would like to demonstrate how we can read RSS feeds.
Background
For seeking information, traditionally we visit various sites individually which is time consuming & also very dull. Use of RSS will save your time by not needing to visit each site individually. It also ensures privacy, by not needing to join each site's email newsletter.
The number of sites offering RSS feeds is growing rapidly and includes big names like Yahoo News.
Using the Code
Using the code is pretty simply; let’s take a simple example to implement this. Our requirement will be reading an RSS feed and displaying it into datagrid view control. We are using a very common & popular RSS feed (http://www.cricinfo.com/rss/livescores.xml) of a wonderful sports news site cricinfo.com.
Here we need a simple basic concept on Dataset
class, which will be found at System.data
namespace.
More details can be found at this link.
Imports System
Imports System.Data.DataSet
Imports System.IO
Imports System.Web
Imports System.Xml
Imports System.Net
Public Class rssFeed
Public objDataset As DataSet = New DataSet
Private Sub ButtonClose_Click(ByVal sender As System.Object, _
ByVal e As System.EventArgs) Handles ButtonClose.Click
Application.Exit()
End Sub
Private Sub ButtonGet_Click(ByVal sender As System.Object, _
ByVal e As System.EventArgs) Handles ButtonGet.Click
Try
If Me.TextBoxWebAddress.Text.Trim <> vbNullString Then
Me.dgViewPreview.DataSource = Nothing
objDataset.ReadXml(Me.TextBoxWebAddress.Text.Trim, _
XmlReadMode.Auto)
dgViewPreview.DataSource = objDataset.Tables(2)
Me.WebBrowser1.Navigate(Me.TextBoxWebAddress.Text.Trim)
Me.WebBrowser1.Refresh()
End If
Catch ex As Exception
objDataset = Nothing
MessageBox.Show(ex.Message.ToString)
End Try
End Sub
Private Sub LinkLabelAuthor_LinkClicked(ByVal sender As System.Object, _
ByVal e As System.Windows.Forms.LinkLabelLinkClickedEventArgs) _
Handles LinkLabelAuthor.LinkClicked
Try
Me.WebBrowser1.Navigate("http://www.codeproject.com/Members/Md-Marufuzzaman")
Me.WebBrowser1.Refresh()
Catch ex As Exception
MessageBox.Show(ex.Message.ToString)
End Try
End Sub
Private Sub dgViewPreview_MouseClick(ByVal sender As System.Object, _
ByVal e As System.Windows.Forms.MouseEventArgs) _
Handles dgViewPreview.MouseClick
Dim intRow As Integer = 0
Dim intItems As Integer = 0
Dim strText As String = vbNullString
Try
intRow = CInt(Me.dgViewPreview.CurrentCell.RowNumber)
intItems = CInt(Me.dgViewPreview.CurrentCell.ColumnNumber)
strText = objDataset.Tables(2).Rows(intRow).Item(intItems)
MessageBox.Show(strText, _
"Selected text", _
MessageBoxButtons.OK, _
MessageBoxIcon.Information, _
MessageBoxDefaultButton.Button1, _
MessageBoxOptions.DefaultDesktopOnly)
Catch ex As Exception
MessageBox.Show(ex.Message.ToString)
End Try
End Sub
End Class
Conclusion
I hope you like this article. Enjoy!
History
- 1st August, 2009: Initial post