Highways Agency - Safe roads, Reliable journeys, Informed travellers

RSS - Your questions answered

Related pages

• Traffic Feeds and Alerts
• Press Release RSS Feeds

RSS frequently asked questions

In simple terms, what is RSS?
RSS is an acronym that actually has a few definitions but now predominantly stands for Really Simple Syndication.

RSS is a free and easy way of receiving web content (sometimes referred to as "feeds") from a variety of websites in one place. You can identify what information is available on a website as an RSS feed usually by the little orange RSS feed icon.

OK, so what's the purpose and benefit of RSS?
The basis of RSS is that it allows relevant information published on the web to be sent direct to you. Regularly updated information such as news and sport etc, from a variety of websites can be sent to you as soon as it's published, without the need for you to visit those individual web sites to read the information where the RSS feed is generated from.

Many websites such as the BBC and online newspaper sites now offer their information as RSS feeds which you can receive so long as you have a reader or aggregator that reads RSS. For example, if you subscribe to a BBC news feed, you will automatically receive and see the latest news headlines in your reader, constantly updated, whenever the BBC website updates its content. In that sense it's a live information feed so long as there is an active active internet connection.

One of the main reasons why RSS is becoming popular is that it's free, convenient and there are now an increasing number of ways to receive and read RSS feeds with considerable ease.

How does it work?
In simple terms, web designers "wrap" information such as news headlines with some web code that allows that information to be distributed and read as RSS. The live feed can then be accessed by a reader that points to the location of the information source by copying the RSS feed in to the RSS news reader or by copying the RSS code onto a web page. The RSS reader interprets the feed and displays it in a digestible form so it's easier for you to read.

You don't get all the news article in the feed  you receive just a digest, usually the news headline and a summary of the article. RSS needs to contain specific elements in order to function correctly as RSS. These are a Title (such as a news Headline), a Description (a brief sentence or description of the news story) and a Link (a weblink to the full story).

What does RSS look like?
Rather complicated. In its "raw" state, the web code looks something like this (below), but when it has been processed by the RSS reader and presented on the page, the code is rendered as standard website text that you would normally see on a website.




How do I get RSS?
You need to find information from a website available as RSS that interests you and then subscribe to it (generally free). The subscription process is instantaneous but this depends upon the news reader you have.

There are two main ways of reading RSS. Either you can download a newsreader, or view feeds direct from popular web browsers such as the latest version of Internet Explorer or Apple's Safari which incorporate RSS Feeds into their bookmark programs. 

Newsreaders are just a piece of software that specifically read and make sense of RSS feeds that you subscribe to. There are many different versions, some of which are accessed using a browser, and some of which are downloadable applications. Examples are NewsGator, Bloglines, Rojo and Google Reader. Newsreaders work differently so you will have to find the reader that best suits you.

Once you have installed the Newsreader, simply visit your favourite websites and identify the feeds that suit you. RSS feeds are usually Identified by the orange RSS symbol on the web page. Follow the instructions of your news reader which usually requires you to copy the url (the web address) of the feed you want and paste it in your reader to subscribe.

What kind of RSS information can I get from the Highways Agency?
We provide our live traffic information data by RSS. Users can select what region and road they want traffic data for. More information is available on our RSS page www.highways.gov.uk/rss . Here you will find our national traffic RSS feed showing the latest traffic incidents as they occur across all of our network, and there is also regional and road RSS feeds (eg Yorkshire or M1) which show incidents in areas relevant to you. We are expanding these regional and road feeds all the time, with the intention of providing specific feeds for all the major roads along our network.

Our national and regional press releases are also available in RSS, so you can catch up with news relevant to where you live as soon as we publish them to our website. More information is available on our news RSS page www.highways.gov.uk/rssnews.

Are there any conditions for using the RSS feeds and can anybody use them?
If you are an individual, all you need to do is subscribe to the feed in the usual way. There's no form to fill in and we don't collect data on anyone that accesses the data. If you are an organisation or business subscribing to traffic information, we ask you to agree to our terms and conditions and fill in details. This is just so we are aware of who is using our data and where, and allows us to gauge the expansion and popularity of our RSS service. 

Is the Highways Agency planning to provide additional RSS feeds?
Yes. As RSS becomes increasingly popular, we are looking at providing feeds for our news services as well as investigating the feasibility of offering feeds for our latest vacancies, procurement opportunities and details of updates to road projects in your area.

Feedback on RSS
We always appreciate your feedback and would welcome your comments on our existing feeds, how we can develop them, or your thoughts on new RSS feeds. Please send them by email to ha_info@highways.gsi.gov.uk