SkeyMedia

Tonight I was working on an RSS package for a client of mine. Having dealt with RSS feeds in the past, I figured it wouldn't be a big deal. However, my experience with them has always been on the 'receiving' end of it, imploding out the <item></item>'s and making sense of the xml.

For the most part, setting up the RSS2.0 feed was pretty straight forward. The one thing that took a little time to manipulate was the RFC-32 date/time formatting that RSS Feeds require in order to validate. And we all know how important validation is

So, I came up with a simple little function to help you out and save you some time in your own Classic ASP RSS feeds.

< %
Function getrfcdate(mydate)
  'format date in rfc-32
  'format:  Wed, 02 Oct 2002 08:00:00 EST
 
  If Hour(mydate)< 10 Then
    myhour = "0" & Hour(mydate)
  Else
    myhour = Hour(mydate)
  End If
 
  If minute(mydate)< 10 Then
    myminute = "0" & minute(mydate)
  Else
    myminute = minute(mydate)
  End If
 
  If second(mydate)< 10 Then
    mysecond = "0" & second(mydate)
  Else
    mysecond = second(mydate)
  End If
 
  If day(mydate)< 10 Then
    myday = "0" & day(mydate)
  Else
    myday = day(mydate)
  End If
 
  mymonth = monthName(Month(mydate),true)
 
  myyear = Year(mydate)
 
  dayname = WeekdayName(Weekday(mydate),true)
 
  mydate = dayname & ", " & myday & " " & mymonth & " " & myyear & " " & myhour & ":" & myminute & ":" & mysecond & " EST"
 
  getrfcdate = mydate
End Function
 
%>

To call it, simply pass in a normal date/time string, such as now() or a getdate() recordset variable return from a sql query:

< %
response.write "<pubDate>"& getrfcdate(now()) &"</pubDate>" & vbcrlf
%>

There you go