Damir Tomicic - ein Tag in der community!

You have heard about it, but you couldn't believe it? It's true ... here is one sample, which demostrates how easy is to build a simple RSS Blog Reader from scratch using the new asp:XmlDatasource control, the asp:GridView server control and new XPath binding support for hierarchical data structures.

How to create simple RSS Blog Reader?

1. Start Visual Studio 2005 (aka "Whidbey")
2. Click on "File", than "New", than "Web Site", than create "Empty Web Site" somewhere on your disk
3. Click on "File", than "New", than "File" and create new WebForm BlogReader.aspx with option "Place Code in separate file" checked.
4. Take the code and put it in your page within <form>-tag.
5. Click on BlogReader.aspx with right mouse and choose "View in Browser".

Voilà

Here are the Screenshots:

• Visual Studio 2005 / BlogReader.aspx 
• Blog Reader (on vs2005 built-in web server)

You can put the same functionality in Web User Control / Web Part, and add any avaliable RSS-Feed to your web site. 

Code:

    <div>
        <asp:XmlDataSource ID="XmlDataSource1" DataFile="http://tomicic.de/SyndicationService.asmx/GetRss"
            XPath="rss/channel/item" Runat="server" /><%#XPath("pubDate")%>
        <%#XPath("title") %>
        <%# XPath("description") %>
        &nbsp;
    </div>
        <br />
        <asp:GridView ID="GridView1" Runat="server" BorderColor="#CCCCCC" BackColor="White"
            BorderWidth="1px" BorderStyle="None" CellPadding="6" CellSpacing="6" DataSourceID="XmlDataSource1"
            AllowPaging="True" PageSize="5" AutoGenerateColumns="False">
            <FooterStyle ForeColor="#000066" BackColor="White">
            </FooterStyle>
            <PagerStyle BackColor="White" HorizontalAlign="Left" ForeColor="#000066">
            </PagerStyle>
            <HeaderStyle ForeColor="White" Font-Bold="True" BackColor="#006699">
            </HeaderStyle>
            <Columns>
                <asp:TemplateField HeaderText="Damir Tomicic">
                    <ItemStyle ForeColor="#000066">
                    </ItemStyle>
                    <ItemTemplate>
                        <%#XPath("pubDate")%>
                        <br />
                        <b>
                            <a href="<%#XPath("link") %>">
                            <%#XPath("title") %></a> [<%#XPath("category") %>]
                        </b>     
                        <br />
                        <%# XPath("description") %> 
                        <a href="<%#XPath("link") %>">[Read more ...]</a>
                    </ItemTemplate>
                </asp:TemplateField>
            </Columns>
            <SelectedRowStyle ForeColor="White" Font-Bold="True" BackColor="#669999">
            </SelectedRowStyle>
            <RowStyle ForeColor="#000066">
            </RowStyle>
        </asp:GridView>