Decided it would be cool to create a blog feed ASP.NET server control, so I did. It's not yet 100% complete, still want to add a few miscellaneous features and true VS.NET Designer support, but that will come this weekend likely. The control caches the RSS feeds in the data cache for a developer-specified period (defaults to 60 minutes) - do you think it would be worthwhile to add support to cache to disk as well?
Anywho, you can see a very simply version of the control in action here. Note that the complete code needed to get this output is just:
<%@ Register TagPrefix="skm" Namespace="skmRss" Assembly="skmRss" %>
<SCRIPT language=C# runat="server">
private void Page_Load(object sender, System.EventArgs e)
{
if (!Page.IsPostBack)
{
sowFeed.DataSource = "http://scottonwriting.net/sowblog/Rss.aspx";
sowFeed.DataBind();
}
}
</SCRIPT>
<skm:rssfeed id=sowFeed HeaderText="ScottOnWriting.NET" runat="server">
</skm:rssfeed>
A somewhat prettier version of the control in action can be seen here. The source code is the same as above, but the control's declarative syntax requires a bit more work (although through VS.NET the “work” is merely flipping a few properties in the Design tab...):
<skm:rssfeed id=sowFeed HeaderText="ScottOnWriting.NET" CellPadding="4"
Font-Size="10pt" Font-Names="Verdana" runat="server"
HorizontalAlign="center" width="80%">
<ALTERNATINGITEMSTYLE BackColor="#E0E0E0" />
<HEADERSTYLE Font-Size="14pt" BackColor="#000040" ForeColor="White" Font-Bold="True" />
</skm:rssfeed>
I will be adding this project to the GotDotNet Workspaces sometime this weekend, if you're interested in getting access to the control and/or code.