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@andrewstiefel
Created January 24, 2022 18:43
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Simple XSL boilerplate for styling Atom feeds in Jekyll
---
---
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<?xml-stylesheet href="/feed.xsl" type="text/xsl"?>
<feed xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom">
<title>{{ site.title }}</title>
<link href="{{ site.url }}{{ site.baseurl }}/feed.xml" rel="self"/>
<link href="{{ site.url }}{{ site.baseurl }}/" rel="alternate"/>
<subtitle>{{ site.description }}</subtitle>
<updated>{{ site.time | date_to_xmlschema }}</updated>
<id>{{ site.url }}/</id>
<author>
<name>{{ site.author.name }}</name>
<email>{{ site.author.email }}</email>
</author>
<rights type="text">Copyright © {{ site.time | date: "%Y" }} {{ site.author }}. All rights reserved.</rights>
{% for post in site.posts %}
<entry>
<title>{{ post.title }}</title>
<link rel="alternate" href="{{ site.url }}{{ post.url }}"/>
<updated>{{ post.date | date_to_xmlschema }}</updated>
<id>{{ site.url }}{{ site.baseurl }}{{ post.id }}</id>
<summary>{{ post.description }}</summary>
<content type="html">{{ post.content | xml_escape }}</content>
</entry>
{% endfor %}
</feed>
<xsl:stylesheet
version="1.0"
xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform"
xmlns:atom="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom"
exclude-result-prefixes="atom"
>
<xsl:output method="html" version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" indent="yes"/>
<xsl:template match="/">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
<head>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"/>
<meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1, maximum-scale=1"/>
<title>Web Feed • <xsl:value-of select="atom:feed/atom:title"/></title>
<style type="text/css">
body{max-width:768px;margin:0 auto;font-family:-apple-system,BlinkMacSystemFont,"Segoe UI",Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif,"Apple Color Emoji","Segoe UI Emoji","Segoe UI Symbol";font-size:16px;line-height:1.5em}section{margin:30px 15px}h1{font-size:2em;margin:.67em 0;line-height:1.125em}h2{border-bottom:1px solid #eaecef;padding-bottom:.3em}.alert{background:#fff5b1;padding:4px 12px;margin:0 -12px}a{text-decoration:none}.entry h3{margin-bottom:0}.entry p{margin:4px 0}
</style>
</head>
<body>
<section>
<div class="alert">
<p><strong>This is a web feed</strong>, also known as an RSS feed. <strong>Subscribe</strong> by copying the URL from the address bar into your newsreader app.</p>
</div>
</section>
<section>
<xsl:apply-templates select="atom:feed" />
</section>
<section>
<h2>Recent Items</h2>
<xsl:apply-templates select="atom:feed/atom:entry" />
</section>
</body>
</html>
</xsl:template>
<xsl:template match="atom:feed">
<h1><xsl:value-of select="atom:title"/>'s Web Feed Preview</h1>
<p>This RSS feed provides the latest posts from <xsl:value-of select="atom:title"/>'s blog.
<a class="head_link" target="_blank">
<xsl:attribute name="href">
<xsl:value-of select="atom:link[@rel='alternate']/@href"/>
</xsl:attribute>
Visit Website &#x2192;
</a>
</p>
<h2>What is an RSS feed?</h2>
<p>An RSS feed is a data format that contains the latest content from a website, blog, or podcast. You can use feeds to <strong>subscribe</strong> to websites and get the <strong>latest content in one place</strong>.</p>
<ul>
<li><strong>Feeds put you in control.</strong> Unlike social media apps, there is no algorithm deciding what you see or read. You always get the latest content from the creators you care about.</li>
<li><strong>Feed are private by design.</strong> No one owns web feeds, so no one is harvesting your personal information and profiting by selling it to advertisers.</li>
<li><strong>Feeds are spam-proof.</strong> Had enough? Easy, just unsubscribe from the feed.</li>
</ul>
<p>All you need to do to get started is to add the URL (web address) for this feed to a special app called a newsreader. Visit <a href="https://aboutfeeds.com/">About Feeds</a> to get started with newsreaders and subscribing. It’s free. </p>
</xsl:template>
<xsl:template match="atom:entry">
<div class="entry">
<h3>
<a target="_blank">
<xsl:attribute name="href">
<xsl:value-of select="atom:id"/>
</xsl:attribute>
<xsl:value-of select="atom:title"/>
</a>
</h3>
<p>
<xsl:value-of select="atom:summary" disable-output-escaping="yes" />
</p>
<small>
Published: <xsl:value-of select="atom:updated" />
</small>
</div>
</xsl:template>
</xsl:stylesheet>
@colindean
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Thanks for this! I've used this to style the ATOM feed at https://codeandsupply.co/jobs. I've not worked in XSL in several years after using it actively for ~8 years, so it was a fun treat to get back to into it.

@andrewstiefel
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Author

@colindean Thanks for your note, and glad you found it useful! Love the implementation on https://codeandsupply.co/jobs as well 😄

@colindean
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Awesome! I'm slowly working this into something else. Do you consider this public domain, or would you like to put some kind of license on it?

@andrewstiefel
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@colindean I consider this public domain. It's a very basic example that is meant to show a few possibilities. I hope people take this further by customizing the content, styles, etc. for their own projects — and extending it further.

@colindean
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Thank you for that confirmation! It's going in my toolkit ;-)

@chris-prenissl
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Thank you very much for your blog post https://andrewstiefel.com/style-atom-xsl. It helped a lot to understand feed styling and feeds in general and styling my personal blog feed https://chris-prenissl.github.io. :)

@andrewstiefel
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@chris-prenissl Awesome, thanks so much for your note and for sharing your blog! Love seeing implementations out there 😍

@redblobgames
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I too wanted to thank you for your blog post. I had previously attempted to use CSS but your XSL is much nicer! I am using your template for https://www.redblobgames.com/blog/posts.xml

@andrewstiefel
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@redblobgames Hey, thanks for sharing! Love how you took the example and customized it to match your site's styles 🙌

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