RSS Reader for a Mobile Device in J2ME (Computer Project)
RSS is an XML file format used for
convenient syndication of information and data. This report details the
research made into RSS and J2ME, the development platform used.
Also discussed is how the project was designed and a detailed
description of the implementation which includes class descriptions and
operations, steps taken in packaging the application, deployment of the
package and how the application was tested. The report concludes with an
evaluation of the project specification and whether the goals were met.
Introduction:
This project will develop a small
application in which a user registers a number of RSS feeds. The
device/application checks every so often to see if there is anything new
on these feeds. If there is something new, then this gets added to some
kind of last updates section of the application.
The application would enable the user to
register RSS feeds, to delete them, to check the latest information
from the RSS feeds and, hopefully, to have some background mode of
operation by which the application could check the RSS feeds
periodically and alert the user if there were any updates. While it is
likely that J2ME will be easier to get the RSS working, there might be
difficulties with Audio content. Therefore it might be required to
investigate Symbian as well.
RSS:
RSS, standing for Really Simple
Syndication as of RSS 2.0, is an XML based method of publishing data for
public consumption efficiently and with as little effort as possible.
An RSS feed contains a channel, which has a title, a link to the
content, a short description, and a series of items which in turn also
have a title, link and a description. RSS is in wide use on the
Internet, particularly in the areas of:
• News Websites; headline feeds.
• Web logging, or blogs; entries and often comments are presented with feeds.
• E-commerce; many on-line shopping sites provide RSS feeds of their latest special offers.
• Media/Content distribution;
audio/video content and also application data such as torrent files can
be embedded in an RSS file to allow for automated identification
and downloading of content.
For the project it was necessary to
research the history of RSS so as to learn about the various formats and
the reasons that they are all for the most part still in use today. It
was also necessary to research how the feeds are presented in XML format
to parse the feeds for display on a mobile device.
J2ME:
J2ME is a version of the Java platform
that is optimised for resource limited devices. As the project
specification requires the application to be developed for mobile
devices, J2ME was chosen for reasons detailed later in this report.
Author: Kevin Hall
Source: Dublin City University
Author: Kevin Hall
Source: Dublin City University
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