Atom Autodiscovery
Auto-discovery is the process by which a user can determine the proper URL (or URLs) for directing Atom and XML-RPC requests for a weblog. Every Six Apart weblog publishes an RDF file, compliant with the industry standard for this file format, that contains a list of all the APIs supported by that weblog. The location of this file is easily found using the following instructions. Of course, applications may choose to automate this process, but for the purposes of this document we will use a normal web browser.
- View the source of your weblog’s homepage.
- In the <head> of the HTML document, look for a link relation entitled “EditURI.” It should look very similar to:
<link rel="EditURI" type="application/rsd+xml" title="RSD" href="http://www.yourdomain.com/rsd.xml">
- Cut and paste the value of the href attribute into your browser. This is the URL of the autodisovery document and contains a list of the APIs supported by the corresponding weblog. The document should appear very similar to:
- The <api> element with the name attribute of “Atom” specifies the URL to which Atom requests can be directed for creating, updating, reading or deleting posts.
Now that you have the URL to which you can direct your Atom requests, you are free to create, read, update and delete weblog posts via Atom.
