Question

I am creating a desktop app that will create some reports. I want to export these reports as RSS or ATOM feeds. I can easily create feeds with Rome lib for Java. But I have no idea how to spread them. I thought about embedding httpd into my app, but it s bad idea, because a computer can be behind NAT or turned off.

I need some kind of "proxy" server, where can I push my feeds, and clients will be able to pull content from that server.

I can probable write server side app fore this, but first I d like to find out if some dedicated solution is available for problems like this.

I was also thinking about using some blogging platform and using its API. What do you think about this approach?

One more thing I have to consider when choosing platform ability to handle lot of updates. Sometimes desktop app will be shut down but when it will be running, it generates quite a lot of updates.

Answer 1

Check out Google s feedburner.

EDIT

Here s a better link for their help / faq. You ll still need to use some service to generate your feed, but it won t have to handle a heavy load. Feedburner will poll your feed every 30 minutes and their servers will act as a proxy for your feed. As far as how to publish the feed for Feedburner to read, I would recommend writing a service to handle this, even more considering that you getting the data for the feeds from a number of desktop applications, and it ll probably be easier to write a custom service to interface with them, store your data in a DB, and publish feeds than it would be to try and modify a blogging service for this purpose.

Answer 2

I don t know why I didn t think of this when I first answered your question, but Yahoo has a service called Yahoo Pipes which allows you could use to generate feeds from various kinds of inputs. I m not sure how well it would scale but it might work for you.

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