Search code examples
rssrss-reader

TLDR; Does RSS-Feeds transport bulk or update?

Reading about RSS leads to many false-informations. I am not quite sure how RSS works. So I have some questions and I hope you dont answer using links-only. There is always another link that claims your link is wrong.

Questions:

  1. If I subscribe to a RSS-Feed the first time, are the feeds from the last 30 years downloaded as a bulk-response may have Gigabytes of data?
  2. Are following requests to a already subscribed RSS-Feed updates to the previous subscription? If yes, how does the server know what messages are already transported to the "client"?
  3. How often are RSS-Feeds downloaded?

Kind regards

Solution
    1. You get whatever is currently in the feed. How many entries and how far back that goes is up to the publisher.
    2. No. Each request gets whatever is in the feed at the time.
    3. As often as the client wants to download them. (The format includes options to recommend a frequency but clients may ignore it).