RSS Feeds

The Anatomy of a Localist RSS Feed

<rss>The opening tag must note the version attribute.

<channel>The channel tag is required in all RSS Feeds.

<title>This tag serves as a title for the Feed.</title>

<description>This tag will just be a brief description of events in the Feed.</description>

<item>This tag is required at the beginning of each event.

<title>This tag is simply the title of your event.</title>

<guid>The purpose of these tags is to note the External ID.</guid>

• An External ID tells our system that content in the <guid> tag is event #1, so each time the Feed imports it will match the previously imported event #1. If your events do not have an External ID, Localist will see each event as “new” during every import.
• The External ID can be anything, like a numerical string or a URL. If you are trying to link to an external website, you’ll have to use the <link> tag. Localist will recognize this as the External ID if <guid> is not present in the Feed.

<pubDate>This is where you’ll note the date and start time of your event.</pubDate>

• Date/time MUST be in this format: Tue, 05 Nov 2019 03:30:00 GMT
• Time MUST be in 24hr format
• You MUST convert your time zone to GMT or UTC (these are interchangeable)
  • U.S. Standard Time & (GMT offset):
    • Eastern Standard Time (GMT -5)
    • Central Standard Time (GMT -6)
    • Mountain Standard Time (GMT -7)
    • Pacific Standard Time (GMT -8)
    • Alaska Standard Time (GMT -9)
    • Hawaii-Aleutian Standard Time (GMT -10)
  • U.S. Daylight Time & (GMT offset):
    • Eastern Daylight Time (GMT -4)
    • Central Daylight Time (GMT -5)
    • Mountain Daylight Time (GMT -6)
    • Pacific Daylight Time (GMT -7)
    • Alaska Daylight Time (GMT -8)
  • Exceptions: Arizona and Hawaii do NOT honor Daylight Savings Time, so they will always be in Standard time.
• If the event’s date/time has advanced to the next day in GMT/UTC, this must be reflected in the Feed for it to display properly in Localist.
  • For example, say an event in your Feed is on Nov 4th at 7:30 pm PST. When you advance the time forward 8 hours, that exact moment in GMT would be Nov 5th at 3:30 am. So, you would have to write that as <pubDate>Tue, 05 Nov 2019 03:30:00 GMT</pubDate> in the Feed for Localist to convert it to Nov 4th at 7:30 pm PST.

<description>This where you’ll include the description for your event.</description>

</item>This tag is required at the end of each event.

</channel>This tag is required at the end of the Feed.

</rss>This tag is required at the end of the Feed.