Checklists

Use the following checklists to validate your RSS XML structure, news feed structure, and news feed procedures.

XML Structure Checklist

You should check that your RSS news feed is valid XML:

• The news feed begins with a valid XML prolog.
• The feed is coded as UTF-8. All characters with an ASCII value higher than 127 are encoded as double byte sequences.
• All XML elements are properly nested. There are no overlapping elements.
• The XML elements are correct in case sensitivity. All elements are specified in lower case.
• All attribute values are specified with double-quotes.
• All elements have closing tags.
• The RSS news feed has been checked by an independent tool or utility for valid XML.

News Feed Structure Checklist

You should check the following conditions in your RSS news feed before you submit the test feed to SSC for validation:

• The feed is formatted as RDF 1.0.
• The RDF document has a RDF header.
• The namespace URLs are specified in the RDF header.
• There is only one channel specification following the RDF header.
• The channel specification contains a title.
• The channel specification contains a link element which is a URL to the textural version of the news.
• The channel specification contains an items element
• The items element contains one or more news items.
• Each news item element contains:
  • A title element
  • A link element
  • A nzgls:date.valid element
  • A unique nzgls:identifier element
  • A nzgls:type.agency element
    • The start date and end date in the nzgls:date.valid element is specified in the format YYYY-MM-DD or YYYY-MM-DDTHH:MM:SS+1200. For example, 2005-05-29T13:00:00+1200.
    • The nzgls:identifier is specified in the format <date>-<sequence>-<agency> and contains only the characters 0 to 9, a to z, A to Z, +, -, or _. For example, 20050529-001-Agency.
    • If the item contains a description field, it consists of pure text without any HTML or XML markup.
    • The feed concludes with a RDF closing statement.

News Feed Procedures Checklist

Before informing SSC that you are ready for them to install the feed on the aggregator, you should ensure that:

• SSC have formally advised that the test feed is correct.
• You have decided on the start date and daily frequency for the news aggregation.
• You have policies and procedures for generating approved titles and descriptions on news items submitted to news aggregation.
• You have processes and procedures to ensure that each news item receives a unique nzgls.identifier element.
• You have decided on and implemented a news feed strategy. For example you will hold items in the feed for at least 7 days or you will hold only 10 items in your feed at any given time.
• You have policies and procedures for future dated news items.
• You have policies and procedures to change the expiry date of a news item if you need to withdraw it.
• You have staff assigned who can be contacted and can respond to issues that arise.