RSS/Atom News Feed

The RSS Feed activity takes existing syndicated content (or web feeds) from the web and displays it in your application in a way that makes it easy for mobile users to browse and read. Web feeds come in two main formats: RSS and ATOM.

Andromo supports the following feed versions: RSS 9.0, RSS 1.0, RSS 2.0, and Atom 1.0. Many websites publish feeds in one or more of these formats.

Example Screenshot

What if I don't have any feeds?

Chances are you have more feeds that you think you do. If you have an online presence; produce or consume online content you are probably creating a feed or accessing sites that are producing feeds. If you have a twitter account, write a blog, post photos online, use google+, participate in a forum or online community, you are probably creating a feed. The trick is to discover where those feeds are and which feeds should be in your application.

Adding an RSS Feed Activity

To add an RSS Feed activity to your project: start editing your project and go to the Activities tab. Under 'Your App Activities' click the + Add an Activity button and select RSS Feed from the list.

Now let's take a look at the RSS Feed Activity settings. For the purpose of this article we will use the andromo blog's atom feed [http://blog.andromo.com/feed/atom/]

Settings

Activity Name
The name that you want to give your activity. This will appear on the dashboard, toolbar, and navigation drawer. This can be whatever you want but should probably describe the feed that you will be displaying. For our example we'll use "Andromo Blog"

Subtitle
A few words describing this activity. This subtitle text may be displayed on the dashboard if the dashboard's item style supports it.

Description
A longer paragraph describing this activity. This description text may be displayed on the dashboard if the dashboard's item style supports it.

Position
This is a relative index that controls the order of the activities in your application. The position will effect where your activity is displayed on the dashboard and navigation drawer. For more information on this setting please read: How to change the order of the icons on the dashboard.

Build this activity (include it in the app)
Whether or not this activity will be included in the app. This may be useful if you're creating different versions of your app that you want to contain different content.

Hide this activity (don't list it on any dashboards or navigation drawer)
When selected, this activity won't show on the dashboard or the navigation drawer. You can still access this activity from an HTML-based activity using it's Activity URL. For more information, refer to the topic Linking to Another Activity.

Theme 

The Theme setting allows you to inherit theme settings from the global theme, parent theme, or override the theme settings for the activity. See the Activity Theme topic for descriptions of these settings.

Images

The Images section allows you to provide the images to show on the activity and those that will be used to represent it on it's parent dashboard and navigation drawer. See the Activity Images topic for descriptions of these settings.

Toolbar

The Toolbar setting allows you to inherit the toolbar settings from the global toolbar, parent toolbar, or override the toolbar settings for the activity. See the Activity Toolbar topic for descriptions of these settings.

Details

RSS/Atom Feed URL
This is the URL of the feed that you would like to display. For example, we'll use: http://blog.andromo.com/feed/atom/

Tip: You can use the Feed Validator to test if a particular feed is valid.

RSS Activity Type
There are two activity types available for the RSS activity, Classic RSS Feed, or Photo Feed. Each have their own settings as described below.

Classic RSS Feed
Useful for text-based feeds. By default each feed item is displayed as a row in a list of feed items on the index activity. Each list item will contain a thumbnail (if available), title, description and the date the post was made. You can control the interface style and what content is shown by selecting a different Item Style.

Item Style
The item style you want to use for the index page of the RSS content. Choose from styles such as cards, grids, and lists including which content you want to show.

When items are no longer in the feed
These settings control how to handle items that are no longer in the current feed data.

• Cache them - Cache the items so they continue to show in the list.
• Hide them - Hide the items that are no longer in the feed.
• Remove them - Remove the items that are no longer in the feed.

When clicking an item
These settings are only visible when "Classic RSS Feed" is selected as the RSS Activity Type.

This controls what happens when the end user clicks or presses on an item in the list.

• Show RSS item content - Show the content contained within the RSS feed in the RSS content activity.
• Open destination link in app - Open the link associated with the RSS item within the RSS content activity.
• Open destination link in Android browser - Open the destination link, outside of the app, within the default Android browser.

Banner ads

These settings are only visible when "Classic RSS Feed" is selected as the RSS Activity Type.

This controls which banner ad networks will be permitted on this RSS feed's content page when banner ads are enabled for the app. This only affects the content page -- the ads shown on the list of RSS feed items will not be affected by this setting.

You can choose whether to permit all ads, all ads except Google AdMob ads, or to prevent any ads from appearing in this activity at all.

Google does not permit AdMob ads to be shown alongside web content containing Google AdSense ads. Refer to the AdMob terms of use and content guidelines for details.

Photo Feed

Useful for image based feeds. By default items will be displayed as a grid of thumbnails. When the user clicks on one of the thumbnails they will be able to view the full sized image. You can control the interface style and what content is shown by selecting a different Item Style.

Show descriptions on photo?
This setting is only visible when "Photo Feed" is selected as the RSS Activity Type.

Whether or not to show the item's description on the photo content page.

Enable Set-picture-as?
This setting is only visible when "Photo Feed" is selected as the RSS Activity Type.

Whether or not the user has the ability to set the photo as their device’s wallpaper, contact photo, or any other available system dependent option.

 Activity URL

The unique reference URL for this activity that can be used for linking to it. For an example of it's usage, refer to the topic Linking to Another Activity.

What the RSS Activity Contains

The RSS Activity contains two activities. The first is a list of items in the feed. When you initially visit this activity it will be blank, and your Andromo app will query the feed and populate it with items. Each item will contain a title and a date the item was published. Most items will also show a short description, and some feed items will have icons associated with them (what you see on the index page depends upon what Item Style you select).

You can scroll through the list and select an item to read. When you click on a feed item you will be brought to the content activity. This activity will show you the title of the feed, the URL associated with the feed item, and the content of the feed item. Some feeds will publish all of the text, and other will only publish the first few sentences, it is up to the feed creator. From there the user will be able to click on the link and view the item in the default Android web browser.