Add Dynamic link rel=alternate RSS directive to ASP.NET Page

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"There are times when the best deals are those that aren't done"
-- David Garrity  (re:MSFT-->YHOO)

I have some pages on my "fun" site, ittyurl.net, that generate and display blog search results and offer a custom RSS feed of same. The url to the page that generates the RSS feed must be dynamic, with a search term on the querystring.  But how can you "turn on" the Feed icon in Internet Explorer so it will show that there is a feed available for the custom results page, and which will correctly point to the generated RSS page?

It's pretty simple:

First, let's put the <link .. tag into the HEAD of the ASP.NET ASPX page, and mark it runat="server":

<head runat="server">
    <title>Untitled Page</title>
    <link id="rssLink" rel="Alternate" type="application/rss+xml" title="RSS" href="" runat="server" />
</head>

Next, after we are done with our custom assembly of the feed (I do it from a DataSet that comes from a SQL query here), this is all we need to do:

protected void Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
    //Do some custom assembly of your feed based on "t" querystring
    // search term here
    string rssSearch = Request["t"];
    this.rssLink.Attributes["href"] = "rss2.aspx?t=" + rssSearch; 
   // now the RSS icon in IE is lit up!

}

 

What if my <link.. tag is in my MasterPage?

 

Not a problem. Here is sample code, similar to the above:

 

HtmlLink rssLink = (HtmlLink)Page.Master.FindControl("rssLink");
rssLink.Attributes["href"] = "RSS2.aspx?t=" + txtSearch.Text;

That's all there is to it!

Peter has been active on the C# and other MS newsgroups, has had samples at gotdotnet.com (now codegallery.com) that have been downloaded over 56,000 times, and has written numerous articles for eggheadcafe.com, for which he is a co-founder, and MSDNAA sites. He has also been a technical reviewer on books from Prentice Hall, Manning and other publishers. Peter was a Microsoft MVP for 10 years. Peter was born and raised in New York City, and after a stint as a jazz musician playing contrabass with the Robert Hunt Trio, migrated to sunny Florida, where he was hired as a rookie Financial Consultant at Merrill Lynch in Orlando, specializing in Corporate Services. It was at Merrill that Peter realized computers and technology were his forte. He spent his last few years at Merrill developing real – time computerized trading and and stock charting program using advanced technical analysis indicators, some of which are his own inventions. In 1997, he moved on to architect and serve as lead developer on a number of innovative web-based and middleware solutions for the healthcare and financial services industry.

Comments

  1. Anonymous3:04 PM

    Thanks! I had the exact same problem, wanted to create a dymanic RSS-URL and add it to the link-tag. But I couldn't get < % = to work inside the link-tag. And it's really hard to google on < % = i found out (cant post it right here either), but found you page at last.

    ReplyDelete
  2. BGM10:00 AM

    Hmmm. My feed is not dynamic, so I put this in my master page, but it doesn't seem to cause the autodiscovery:

    < link rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml" title="RSS Feed for my website" href="http://my.website/feed.xml" / >

    Can I do that in a master page, or do I need to do something else?

    ReplyDelete

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