How do I add an image to an item in RSS 2.0?

Question

Is there a way to send only an Image with a link and some alt text for each item in an RSS feed?

I looked at the enclosure tag but this is only for videos

Answer 1

The enclosure element can be used to transmit pictures. The RSS 2.0 spec is quite clear about that, saying that the type is a MIME type. It does not say it is restricted to audio or video.

Here's an example: a set of photo feeds from Agence France Presse

Answer 2

One of solutions is to use CDATA in description

<![CDATA[
  Image inside RSS
  <img src="http://example.com/img/smiley.gif" alt="Smiley face">         
]> 

Note, that you may have a problem with hotlink prevented site.

Answer 3

Since you are using php you can use htmlentities() to encode the html tags. They look horrible in the xml but RSS readers know what to do with it.

http://php.net/manual/en/function.htmlentities.php

Answer 4

To work with the Mailchimp RSS to email feature, they expect the image to be specified in a <media:content> element inside <item>. This is their source for the feed item's image macro in their templates.

Thus, you need to add to the declarations

xmlns:media="http://search.yahoo.com/mrss/

Then inside the <item> element add

<media:content medium="image" url="http://whatever/foo.jpg" width="300" height="201" />

Without the extra declaration, the feed is invalid since media:content is not a known element.

Answer 5

Inside tag ITEM

<image:image xmlns:image="http://web.resource.org/rss/1.0/modules/image/">

http://domain. com/image.jpg < /image:image>

Inside Description Tag

<![CDATA[
    Some Text..
    <br/><img src='http://domain. com/image.jpg' ><br/>
    More Text
]]>

Answer 6

This is possible in RRS2,

see http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/rss/rss.html#ltenclosuregtSubelementOfLtitemgt

So you have to use the enclosure tag, to add media