How to check if RSS Feed is Valid or not

RSS feeds are one of the simple and easy ways to stay subscribed to content posted by a website.

It is basically an XML file provided by websites. It has a list of the title and a summary of the content. 

We can get this RSS feed URL from a website and use an RSS Reader like Feedly to read its content with a better UX. If you are running a WordPress website, you can display the RSS feed using plugins like Super RSS Reader.

Though RSS feeds are just an XML file, it must follow a certain syntax. For any RSS Reader to work, the RSS feed must have valid syntax.

In this article, I’ll show how to easily validate an RSS feed using a service provided by w3.org.

Validating the RSS Feed #

Open the RSS feed URL in your browser. Most browsers will format the tags present in the RSS feed. Some may even style the RSS feed output in the browser.

This is the first step in quickly validating the feed. Even if the RSS feeds are not formatted, you can simply use the RSS feed validator service.

Copy the RSS feed URL, Go to https://validator.w3.org/feed/

Enter the RSS feed URL in the “Address” field and click “Check”

After submitting the form, you will see the results down below it.

Even if the validator gives warnings about certain elements most RSS Readers will try to ignore them and display the feed in its application. But using the validator is good to follow standards if you are building your own RSS feed.

Conclusion #

Validating an RSS feed is really easy. It is useful both while reading them using a reader or when building your own. We saw how to use w3.org’s service to validate RSS feeds.

If you have any comments, please do share them in the comments section below.