Dhananjay Kumar

Objective

This article is going to explain; how we can read RSS feeds in Silverlight 3.0.

Expected output

1. User will enter RSS URL in text box.
   
2. On click of Fetch Feed button ; RSS items will get populated
   
3. On Clear Search button click text box and list box will be cleared.
   

So, let us start follow the below steps

Step 1

Create a Silverlight application.

Step 2

Add an entity class. In this class RSS Feeds would be read. Right click Silverlight project and add a class. Give any name; I am giving name here MYFeed.

MyFeed.cs

    1  namespace ReadingFeeds

    2     {

    3         public class MyFeed

    4         {

    5 

    6             public string Title { get; set; }

    7             public string Summary { get; set; }

    8             public string PublishedDate { get; set; }

    9             public Uri Url { get; set; }

   10 

   11         }

   12     }

   13 

 

Design the page

1. Divide grid in three rows.
   
2. In first and second row add stack panels.
   
3. Give orientation of stack panel as horizontal.
   
4. In first row; add one text block and one text box. User will enter RSS URL in text box provided here.
   
5. In second row; add two buttons. One button to fetch URL and other to clear the values.
   
6. In third row put a list box. Return items of RSS will be bind to this list box. List box is bind as follows.
   

    

 There is stack panel inside data template. There are different text blocks bind with different data.
MainPage.Xaml

Step 4

1. To read RSS feed; first we need to create instance of WebClient class. This class helps us to make HTTP call from Silverlight 

1. Create a list to read RSS feeds. 
2. Add reference of     using System.ServiceModel.Syndication;
3. Read result return from service in a Stream.
4. Create XMLReader from the stream.
5. Load SyndicationFeed from the XMLReader. Fetch all the SyndicationItem ina foreach loop and create MyFeed instance and add to list. Bind list as datasourec of List box.
    MainPage.Xaml.cs
     

       1 

       2 using System;

       3 using System.Collections.Generic;

       4 using System.Linq;

       5 using System.Net;

       6 using System.Windows;

       7 using System.Windows.Controls;

       8 using System.Windows.Documents;

       9 using System.Windows.Input;

      10 using System.Windows.Media;

      11 using System.Windows.Media.Animation;

      12 using System.Windows.Shapes;

      13 using System.IO;

      14 using System.Xml;

      15 using System.ServiceModel.Syndication;

      16 using System.Collections;

      17 

      18 namespace ReadingFeeds

      19 {

      20     public partial class MainPage : UserControl

      21     {

      22 

      23         List<MyFeed> lstFeed = null;

      24         MyFeed feed = null;

      25 

      26         public MainPage()

      27         {

      28             InitializeComponent();

      29             btnFetchFeed.Click += new RoutedEventHandler(btnFetchFeed_Click);

      30             btnClear.Click += new RoutedEventHandler(btnClear_Click);

      31 

      32         }

      33 

      34         void btnClear_Click(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e)

      35         {

      36             myListBox.SelectedIndex = –1;

      37             myListBox.ItemsSource = null;

      38             txtRssFeed.Text = “”;

      39 

      40         }

      41 

      42         void btnFetchFeed_Click(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e)

      43         {

      44 

      45             Uri serviceURI = null;

      46             if (string.IsNullOrEmpty(txtRssFeed.Text))

      47             {

      48                 MessageBox.Show(“RSS Field is empty “);

      49             }

      50             else

      51             {

      52                 serviceURI = new Uri(txtRssFeed.Text.Trim());

      53                 WebClient proxy = new WebClient();

      54                 proxy.OpenReadCompleted += new OpenReadCompletedEventHandler(proxy_OpenReadCompleted);

      55                 proxy.OpenReadAsync(serviceURI);

      56             }

      57 

      58         }

      59 

      60         void proxy_OpenReadCompleted(object sender, OpenReadCompletedEventArgs e)

      61         {

      62 

      63             lstFeed = new List<MyFeed>();

      64             Stream stream = e.Result;

      65             XmlReader response = XmlReader.Create(stream);

      66             SyndicationFeed feeds = SyndicationFeed.Load(response);

      67             foreach (SyndicationItem f in feeds.Items)

      68             {

      69                 Uri imgUri = f.BaseUri;

      70                 feed = new MyFeed() { Title = f.Title.Text, Summary = f.Summary.Text, PublishedDate = f.PublishDate.ToString(), Url = imgUri };

      71                 lstFeed.Add(feed);

      72             }

      73             myListBox.ItemsSource = lstFeed;

      74         }

      75     }

      76 }

      77 

      78  

   Press F5 and run the application.
   

   Conclusion
   

   In this article I discussed how to read RSS in Silverlight 3.0. Thanks for reading.