Easy Way to Consume/Display RSS Feed in MVC ASP.NET - asp.net-mvc

Question

I'm new to the MVC framework and wondering how to pass the RSS data from the controller to a view. I know there is a need to convert to an IEnumerable list of some sort. I have seen some examples of creating an anonymous type but can not figure out how to convert an RSS feed to a generic list and pass it to the view.
I don't want it to be strongly typed either as there will be multiple calls to various RSS feeds.
Any suggestions.

Answer 1

I've been playing around with a way of doing WebParts in MVC which are basically UserControls wrapped in a webPart container. One of my test UserControls is an Rss Feed control. I use the RenderAction HtmlHelper extension in the Futures dll to display it so a controller action is called. I use the SyndicationFeed class to do most of the work
using (XmlReader reader = XmlReader.Create(feed))
{
SyndicationFeed rssData = SyndicationFeed.Load(reader);
return View(rssData);
}
Below is the controller and UserControl code:
The Controller code is:
using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Linq;
using System.Web;
using System.Web.Mvc;
using System.Web.Mvc.Ajax;
using System.Xml;
using System.ServiceModel.Syndication;
using System.Security;
using System.IO;
namespace MvcWidgets.Controllers
{
public class RssWidgetController : Controller
{
public ActionResult Index(string feed)
{
string errorString = "";
try
{
if (String.IsNullOrEmpty(feed))
{
throw new ArgumentNullException("feed");
}
**using (XmlReader reader = XmlReader.Create(feed))
{
SyndicationFeed rssData = SyndicationFeed.Load(reader);
return View(rssData);
}**
}
catch (ArgumentNullException)
{
errorString = "No url for Rss feed specified.";
}
catch (SecurityException)
{
errorString = "You do not have permission to access the specified Rss feed.";
}
catch (FileNotFoundException)
{
errorString = "The Rss feed was not found.";
}
catch (UriFormatException)
{
errorString = "The Rss feed specified was not a valid URI.";
}
catch (Exception)
{
errorString = "An error occured accessing the RSS feed.";
}
var errorResult = new ContentResult();
errorResult.Content = errorString;
return errorResult;
}
}
}
The UserControl
<%# Control Language="C#" AutoEventWireup="true" CodeBehind="Index.ascx.cs" Inherits="MvcWidgets.Views.RssWidget.Index" %>
<div class="RssFeedTitle"><%= Html.Encode(ViewData.Model.Title.Text) %> <%= Html.Encode(ViewData.Model.LastUpdatedTime.ToString("MMM dd, yyyy hh:mm:ss") )%></div>
<div class='RssContent'>
<% foreach (var item in ViewData.Model.Items)
{
string url = item.Links[0].Uri.OriginalString;
%>
<p><a href='<%= url %>'><b> <%= item.Title.Text%></b></a>
<% if (item.Summary != null)
{%>
<br/> <%= item.Summary.Text %>
<% }
} %> </p>
</div>
with the code behind modified to have a typed Model
using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Linq;
using System.Web;
using System.Web.Mvc;
using System.ServiceModel.Syndication;
namespace MvcWidgets.Views.RssWidget
{
public partial class Index : System.Web.Mvc.ViewUserControl<SyndicationFeed>
{
}
}

Answer 2

#Matthew - perfect solution - as an alternative to code behind which tends to break the MVC concept, you can use:
<%# Page Language="C#" MasterPageFile="~/Views/Shared/Site.Master" Inherits="System.Web.Mvc.ViewPage<SyndicationFeed>" %>
<%# Import Namespace="System.ServiceModel.Syndication" %>

Answer 3

Using MVC you don't even need to create a view, you can directly return XML to the feed reader using the SyndicationFeed Class.
(Edit) .NET ServiceModel.Syndication - Changing Encoding on RSS Feed this is a better way. (snip from this link instead.)
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.servicemodel.syndication.syndicationfeed.aspx
public ActionResult RSS(string id)
{
return return File(MyModel.CreateFeed(id), "application/rss+xml; charset=utf-8");
}
In MyModel
CreateFeed(string id)
{
SyndicationFeed feed = new SyndicationFeed( ... as in the MS link above)
.... (as in the MS link)
//(from the SO Link)
var settings = new XmlWriterSettings
{
Encoding = Encoding.UTF8,
NewLineHandling = NewLineHandling.Entitize,
NewLineOnAttributes = true,
Indent = true
};
using (var stream = new MemoryStream())
using (var writer = XmlWriter.Create(stream, settings))
{
feed.SaveAsRss20(writer);
writer.Flush();
return stream.ToArray();
}
}

Answer 4

A rss is a xml file with special format. You may design a dataset with that generic format and read the rss(xml) with ReadXml method and the uri as the path to the file. Then you have got a dataset you can consume from another clases.