From Bjoern Hassler

Contents 1 Enclosures in yahoo media, rss, and atom 1.1 Why do we need yahoo media? 1.2 A plain RSS 2.0 enclosure 2 Adding yahoo media 3 RSS + Yahoo media 4 Atom 5 Atom + Yahoo media 6 Why Atom+yahoo media makes more sense than extending atom:link. 7 Footnote: What about the "title"? 8 Links

[edit] 1 Enclosures in yahoo media, rss, and atom

In this section we briefly step back from yahoo media as such, but consider the rationale for using yahoo media in comparison with atom and rss. Once we have done this, we return to the specifics of the media:group and media:content elements.

[edit] 1.1 Why do we need yahoo media?

Sometimes the need arises to include more than one piece of media with a particular item. It is often argued that this isn't possible in RSS, but that Atom needs to be used instead. These differences are largely semantic: In RSS 2.0 and Atom, namespaces are supported, so anything is possible. The more salient question is what constructs are supported by feed readers and parsers.

Related discussion: Atom media extension, Using media rss to syndicate and share media.

[edit] 1.2 A plain RSS 2.0 enclosure

An the rss enclosure:

<item>
...
     <enclosure url="http://www.foo.com/movie.mov" length="12216320" type="video/quicktime" />
...
</item>

Basically, RSS 2.0 only allows one enclosure, and thus the rss enclosure on it's own isn't useful: We need to add <media:content> and <atom:link rel="enclosure"> to get additional enclosures. (Of course in rss we may want to add the enclosure anyway (duplicating a <media:content> entry), just in case the feed reader doesn't understand <media:content>.)

So, what does this look like?

[edit] 2 Adding yahoo media

The yahoo media extension can be added to BOTH RSS 2.0 AND Atom. For RSS:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<rss version="2.0" xmlns:media="http://search.yahoo.com/mrss/">

but it could just as easily be used in atom:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<feed xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom" xmlns:media="http://search.yahoo.com/mrss/">

[edit] 3 RSS + Yahoo media

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<rss version="2.0" xmlns:media="http://search.yahoo.com/mrss/">
...
<item>
     ...
     <media:content 
              url="http://www.foo.com/movie.mov" 
              fileSize="12216320" 
              type="video/quicktime"
              medium="video"
              isDefault="true" 
              expression="full" 
              bitrate="128" 
              height="200"
              width="300" 
              duration="185" 
              lang="en" />
     <media:content ..... />
...

[edit] 4 Atom

The same could be done for Atom, but it would be more common to use <atom:link>. In atom, we can use <atom:link rel="enclosure type="" hreflang="" title="" length="">, and could write some of this information as:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<feed xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom">
...
<entry>
     ...
     <link rel="enclosure" 
              href="http://www.foo.com/movie.mov" 
              length="12216320" 
              type="video/quicktime"
              hreflang="en" />
     <link rel="enclosure" ..... />
...

However, by itself, the <atom:link> doesn't carry the same information as the <media:group>, so if we needed that information (as we would for syndication, see some discussion Atom media extension), we would add another extension ('m'):

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<feed xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom" xmlns:m="http://....">
...
<entry>
     ...
     <link rel="enclosure" 
              href="http://www.foo.com/movie.mov" 
              length="12216320" 
              type="video/quicktime"
              m:medium="video"
              m:isDefault="true" 
              m:expression="full" 
              m:bitrate="128" 
              m:height="200"
              m:width="300" 
              m:duration="185" 
              hreflang="en" />
     <link rel="enclosure" ..../>
...

Hence the main argument is not about atom vs. rss, but it's about what information needs to be included, and - more importantly - what's supported by feed readers and feed parsers.

[edit] 5 Atom + Yahoo media

Here is how you do atom + yahoo media:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<feed xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom" xmlns:media="http://search.yahoo.com/mrss/">
...
<entry>
     ...
     <media:content 
              url="http://www.foo.com/movie.mov" 
              fileSize="12216320" 
              type="video/quicktime"
              medium="video"
              isDefault="true" 
              expression="full" 
              bitrate="128" 
              height="200"
              width="300" 
              duration="185" 
              lang="en" />
     <media:content ..... />
...

[edit] 6 Why Atom+yahoo media makes more sense than extending atom:link.

I guess it depends on what you want to do, but if you want to syndicate, then the attributes of <atom:link> aren't sufficient. Rather than introducing a new extension ('m' above), that isn't understood by feed parsers, it makes more sense to stick with the yahoo media extension, which has wide support in parsers (such as simple pie).

[edit] 7 Footnote: What about the "title"?

You may have noted above that the title attribute of <atom:link> wasn't used. Titles can be specified in yahoo-media, as well as atom:link as follows:

     <media:content url="http://www.foo.com/movie.mov">
                    <media:title>Some title</media:title>
     </media:content>

Atom:

    <atom rel="enclosure" href="http://www.foo.com/movie.mov" title="Some title" />

[edit] 8 Links

• Media rss media group element