Blogging tools should archive in RSS
By
Dave Winer on Sunday, June 03, 2012 at 10:44 AM.
 A friend emailed to ask if it was possible to write a small application that read all of the RSS for back-issues of a specific blog and gathered information about links, number of words, etc.  I answered that it was not possible, as far as I know, but it should be.
So, to my engineering friends, here is a use-case. A smart user who thought of a feature that really should be present in every blogging system.
Now, I'm in a position to suggest, very specifically how this feature could work, because I've implemented it in my linkblogging software, Radio2. I've documented it in the form of a namespace because it adds a few new elements to my feed, that are not part of the body of RSS 2.0. Very straightforward, and documented, so that if it were implemented this way, all blogging software would be compatible. And one could write an app that started with a feed, downloaded all the previous posts. It would be possible to write backup software that worked with all blogging tools.
First, here are the docs for the new namespace.
There's a single RSS file for every day. The directory is arranged as a calendar, with a folder for each year, containing folders for each month, which contain folders for days which contain a single file for each day. I went with a folder for a day because you might want to include other content in the calendar structure. And any of these can be missing, because some days (or months) you don't post.
All that's needed here is a common way to do it, otherwise known as a "standard" -- so I thought I'd put one out there and see if it gains any traction. Next time a user asks for about this, I'd love to say "If you used the X blogging tool, you'd have this feature." Or even better "All blogging tools support this, so you're in luck!"
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