Author: John Fowler

As noted earlier the use of RSS is not limited to written materials only. RSS allows for multimedia files to be included in feeds as well. RSS feeds containing audio files are called podcasting feeds. The ones that contain video files are called vodcasting feeds, or video podcasting feeds. As these names suggest the terms were derived from Apple's iPod players, but these feeds are designed to be used on any portable device capable of playing audio and video files.

Multimedia files are attached to the feeds using the enclosure tag. The following is an example of how we would attach an mp3 file to our first item:

<enclosure url=" http://www.galacticnews.scf/news/14012004/mp3s/05468fd.mp3" length="1243454" type="audio/mpeg"/>

The parameters within the enclosure tag are url, length and type. The url parameter specifies the location of the attached file. Length is the size of the file in bytes the type describes the type and format of the file.

Each item may contain one enclosure element.

Note: the multimedia file is not 'physically' attached to the feed. The feed contains a hyperlink to the file, so a device using the feed can download the file from its location and play it.