IMDb News gathers content from the feeds of individual publishers. To have your articles displayed in our site, you must give us your XML news feed.
This document guides you through our two accepted XML standards for your News feed, RSS and Atom.
Fields RSS accepted standards Atom accepted standards Example item
If you supply multiple elements for the same field in an item, one element is prioritized in the order indicated. For example, mrss:thumbnail
in Table 1 is prioritized over rss:enclosure
, and the value for atom:modified
is displayed rather than atom:published
.
Table 1: Accepted XML element schema
IMDb field |
Description |
Required |
RSS element ID |
Atom element ID |
Icon |
Thumbnail for news item. IMDb dynamically crops images, please refer back to your image icon in your feed. |
Yes |
mrss:thumbnail |
mrss:thumbnail |
Title |
Headline, one line, no markup |
Yes |
rss:title |
atom:title |
Body |
Synopsis, markup enabled. Requires 60+ words. |
Yes |
rss:description |
atom:content |
Link |
Link back to original article |
Yes |
rss:link |
atom:link |
Date |
Date/time of last modified |
Yes |
dc:date |
atom:updated |
Author |
Separate many author names by ", " |
No |
dc:creator |
atom:author |
Unique ID |
Identifies your item. The unique ID is set to your article link by default. |
No for RSS |
rss:guid |
atom:id |
Tags |
Your categories or tags. Saved as array. IMDb currently stores, but does not use, news item tags. |
No |
rss:category |
atom:category |
No. comments |
Number of comments. IMDb currently does not display comments. |
No |
slash:comments |
slash:comments |
Each news item ought to be in <item>. . .</item>
. You should only have one channel in a particular news feed.
The following example sets up optional namespaces. In <channel>
, all the listed elements are mandatory or recommended. You may substitute <lastbuilddate>
with <pubdate>
.
<!?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?--> <rss version="2.0" xmlns:media="http://search.yahoo.com/mrss/" xmlns:content="http://purl.org/rss/1.0/modules/content/" xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/" xmlns:slash="http://purl.org/rss/1.0/modules/slash/" xmlns:atom="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom" > <channel> <!--Elements required by RSS--> <title>YOUR FEED NAME</title> <link>https://YOUR.DOMAIN/YOUR-FEED</link> <description>YOUR DESCRIPTION</description> <!--Elements required by IMDb. Dates in RFC-822 format--> <lastbuilddate>Wed, 30 Mar 2022 16:10:58 GMT</lastbuilddate> <language>YOUR LANGUAGE CODE</language> <atom:link rel="self" type="application/rss+xml" href="https://THIS-FEED-LINK"> <!--Recommended--> <image> <title>YOUR PUBLICATION</title> <url>https://YOUR.DOMAIN/YOUR-LOGO.jpg</url> <link>https://YOUR.DOMAIN</link> </image> <copyright>YOUR COMPANY. All rights reserved. 2022</copyright> <item> <!--Your entry article--> </item> </channel> </rss>
Each of the following subsections lists by example, in order of priority, the accepted schema for each element.
<media:thumbnail url="https://YOUR.DOMAIN/ICON.jpg"> <!--medium, not type, must be set to image--> <media:content medium="image" url="https://YOUR.DOMAIN/ICON.jpg"> <enclosure type="image/jpg" url="https://YOUR.DOMAIN/ICON.jpg" length="SIZE IN BYTES"> <!--You may put the image in your body, only if the body is in rss:description.--> <!--The first rss:img is interpreted as thumbnail.--> <description> <![CDATA[YOUR BODY CONTENT <img src="https://YOUR.DOMAIN/ICON.jpg"/>]]> </description>
<title> YOUR TITLE </title>
If you have both a
and a
field in an article, we will assume the latter contains only a summary and the former the full body. We’ll only take the full body.
<content:encoded> <![CDATA[ <p>YOUR BODY CONTENT HERE</p> <p>"SAMPLE FOR MARKUP"</p> ]]> </content:encoded> <description> <![CDATA[ <p>YOUR BODY CONTENT HERE</p> <p>"SAMPLE FOR MARKUP"</p> ]]> </description>
<link> https://YOUR.DOMAIN/2022/03/YOUR-ARTICLE-1337 </link>
W3CDTF
format:<dc:date> 2022-03-30T00:00:00Z </dc:date>
RFC-822
format:<pubdate> Wed, 30 Mar 2022 09:00:00 GMT </pubdate>
<dc:creator> YOUR AUTHOR NAME </dc:creator> <author> AUTHOR@EMAIL.ADDRESS </author>
Conventionally set to article URL.
<guid> https://YOUR.DOMAIN/2022/03/YOUR-ARTICLE-1337 </guid>
<category><![CDATA[Action]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Oscars]]></category>
<slash:comments> 1 </slash:comments>
See: Atom specs
Each news item ought to be in <entry> . . . </entry>
. You should only have one channel in a particular news feed.
The following example sets up optional namespaces. In <channel>
, all the listed elements are mandatory or recommended.
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> <feed xml:lang="YOUR LANGUAGE CODE" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom" xmlns:media="http://search.yahoo.com/mrss/" xmlns:content="http://purl.org/rss/1.0/modules/content/" xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/" xmlns:slash="http://purl.org/rss/1.0/modules/slash/" > <!--Required by Atom standard. Date-time in RFC-3339 format--> <id>https://THIS-FEED-LINK</id> <title>YOUR FEED NAME</title> <updated>2022-03-30T08:45:00.000-04:00</updated> <!--Required by IMDb--> <link rel="self" type="application/atom+xml" href="https://THIS-FEED-LINK"/> <!--Recommended--> <author> <name>YOUR PUBLICATION</name> </author> <icon>https://YOUR.DOMAIN/YOUR-LOGO.jpg</icon> <rights>YOUR COMPANY. All rights reserved. 2022</rights> <entry> <!--Your entry article--> </entry> </feed>
<media:thumbnail url="https://YOUR.DOMAIN/ICON.jpg"/> <!--medium, not type, must be set to image--> <media:content medium="image" url="https://YOUR.DOMAIN/ICON.jpg"/>
<title> YOUR TITLE </title>
html
or xhtml
may be used as type
in either case.
<content type="html"> <p>YOUR BODY CONTENT HERE</p> <p>"SAMPLE FOR MARKUP"</p> </content> <summary type="xhtml"> <div xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> <p>YOUR BODY CONTENT HERE</p> <p>"SAMPLE FOR MARKUP"</p> </div> </summary>
<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://YOUR.DOMAIN/2022/03/YOUR-ARTICLE-1337"/>
You must set an updated
value on every entry. Date-time in RFC-3339
format.
<updated>2022-03-30T08:45:00.000-04:00</updated> <published>2022-03-30T08:45:00.000-04:00</published>
<author> <name>YOUR AUTHOR NAME</name> </author>
Set your id to the article URI, unless you have another ID system. This field is mandatory on the Atom standard.
<id>https://YOUR.DOMAIN/2022/03/YOUR-ARTICLE-1337</id>
Set term
to identify the category and label
as a human-readable text. label
is optional.
<category term="the-shining" label="The Shining"/> <category term="reviews"/>
<slash:comments> 1 </slash:comments>
Figure 1: How your News item may display on the Site
Figure 1 is an example manifestation, subject to change at IMDb's will, of the following RSS item:
<item> <media:content medium="image" url="https://SAMPLE-IMDB-ICON"> <title>YOUR TITLE</title> <content:encoded><![CDATA[ <p>YOUR BODY CONTENT HERE</p> <p>"SAMPLE FOR MARKUP"</p> ]]></content:encoded> <dc:date>2022-04-05T01:02:03Z</dc:date> <!--Put multiple authors like AUTHOR 1, AUTHOR 2 and AUTHOR 3--> <dc:creator>YOUR AUTHOR NAME</dc:creator> <!--The instances above of YOUR TITLE and YOUR PUBLICATION link to the following--> <link>https://YOUR.DOMAIN/2022/03/YOUR-ARTICLE-1337</link> <!--guid need not be the same as article link, but it can be--> <guid>https://YOUR.DOMAIN/2022/03/YOUR-ARTICLE-1337</guid> </item>
Alternatively, the following Atom entry:
<entry> <media:content medium="image" url="https://SAMPLE-IMDB-ICON"> <title>YOUR TITLE</title> <content type="html"> <p>YOUR BODY CONTENT HERE</p> <p>"SAMPLE FOR MARKUP"</p> </content> <updated>2022-04-05T01:02:03.000-00:00</updated> <!--Put multiple authors like AUTHOR 1, AUTHOR 2 and AUTHOR 3--> <author><name>YOUR AUTHOR NAME</name></author> <!--The instances above of YOUR TITLE and YOUR PUBLICATION link to the following--> <link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://YOUR.DOMAIN/2022/03/YOUR-ARTICLE-1337"> <!--guid need not be the same as article link, but it can be--> <id>https://YOUR.DOMAIN/2022/03/YOUR-ARTICLE-1337</id> </entry>
You're on your own in this department but we have had good fortune with https://validator.w3.org/feed/