Developing Feeds with RSS and Atom

Name

mod_servicestatus

Synopsis

mod_servicestatus is one of the latest RSS 1.0 modules. Its purpose is to allow RSS 1.0 to display details of the status and current availability of services and servers.

You should bear in mind the difference between services and servers. One service may rely on more than one server in the back end. For the user, however, such information is irrelevant: something either works or it doesn’t. With mod_servicestatus, you can’t differentiate between a virtual service and an actual physical server, but you can combine servers into services at the parsing stage. This means one feed can be used for multiple things: a detailed display for sysadmins and a simplified version for end users.

Namespace

The mod_servicestatus prefix is ss:, and the module is identified by the URI http://purl.org/rss/1.0/modules/servicestatus/. So, a mod_servicestatus feed starts like this:

<rdf:RDF xmlns:rdf="http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#"
       xmlns="http://purl.org/rss/1.0/"
         xmlns:ss="http://purl.org/rss/1.0/modules/servicestatus/"
>

Elements

The first element of mod_servicestatus is a subelement of channel:

ss:aboutStats

A URI that points to a page explaining the results and methodology being used

All other elements within mod_servicestatus are subelements of item. As with many modules, all these elements are optional, but the more you include, the more fun you’ll have.

ss:responding

This can be either true or false, and it refers to whether the server is responding.

ss:lastChecked ...