The RSS Feed Notifier



The application is, in the most general of terms, a notification program to allow the user to know when an RSS feed has been updated. To be more precise, it allows the user to track any particular RSS feed they so choose, providing they have some knowledge in XML to allow them to determine a particular tag to which updates can be tracked through.

One of the key requirements behind this application was functionality before design. The design is the bare minimum and I hope to one day build on it further to improve its design.

While more often than not, what will be tracked is a date that is changed every time the feed is updated, the exact title of the tag can, and most likely will, change from feed to feed. Because of this, it is required to have a specific tag listed.

The application operates via a pair of files which contain either the data inputted by the user or the data retreived from the RSS feed, and a timer that runs every 10 minutes. The data retreived by the RSS feed will be compared to what is already stored, if anything, when the application first runs, along with every instance the timer executes. Note, you can technically run the program, check, then close it to save system memory, then reopen it when you wish to check again.

The application uses the following AIR specific classes:

- flash.filesystem.* - All of the classes required for creating, deleteing, editting and reading files.
- flash.display.NativeWindow - The class required to create new windows with Actionscript 3. Without it, only the stage can be used.
- flash.display.NativeWindowInitOptions - This class is required to define initialization options used when constructing a new NativeWindow instance.
- flash.display.NativeWindowSystemChrome - This class is one of two classes that define constants for a property of the NativeWindowInitOptions class. This one defines the systemChrome property, which is the operating system-specific elements of a window, such as a title bar, minimize, maximize, and close buttons.
- flash.display.NativeWindowType - This is one of two classes that define constants for a property of the NativeWindowInitOptions class. This one defines the type property, which is the type of window shown: Light weight, normal, or utility.

With the exception of the first class, flash.filesystem.*, each must be specifically named. Using flash.display.* will load too many classes. However, flash.filesystem.* will load only three classes, all of which are used in this application.