Yahoo! RSS Feeds

Yahoo! provides content for a variety of products and services as RSS feeds — thousands of feeds in total. You can subscribe to an RSS feed in My Yahoo! or another RSS feed reader application. If you are a developer, RSS is an XML application, so you can parse RSS feeds as XML and then use the content within those feeds to build your own web applications or mashups or desktop client applications.

This page provides an overview of Yahoo! RSS feed support and how to get started using RSS from a developer perspective.

Getting Started with RSS

RSS – "Really Simple Syndication" – is a mechanism for web site developers to publish headlines and frequently-updated content as a web feed. A web feed is a low-bandwidth, stripped down version of a web site that readers can subscribe to in a feed reader or that developers can parse and manipulate for their own use. There are a number of competing technical formats for feeds on the web including several different incompatible versions of RSS and a competing format called Atom. Yahoo! web feeds all conform to the RSS 2.0 specification and thus we refer to our feeds simply as RSS feeds.

RSS files are XML. If you view an RSS file in a web browser most of the time you will see raw XML text and not a formatted page like you do HTML. To view an RSS feed properly, you need to subscribe to that feed in a feed reader such as My Yahoo. Other feed readers include Bloglines, Google Reader, NewsGator, SharpReader, NetNewsWire, or RSS Bandit. Your email application may also provide a way of reading feeds.

Most Yahoo! RSS feeds have a single static URL, for example:

http://rss.news.yahoo.com/rss/entertainment

A number of RSS feeds, however, take arguments or parameters, which enable you to generate different custom RSS feeds depending on the specific content you are interested in. For example, the Yahoo! Weather feeds take parameters for zip code or location ID and look something like this:

http://xml.weather.yahoo.com/forecastrss?p=USCA1116

These latter RSS URLs with parameters are called custom or dynamic RSS feeds. Note that the content of all RSS feeds is dynamic (it changes on a regular basis). The term dynamic refers to the ability to generate multiple feeds from the same URL. Because dynamic RSS feeds are often more interesting to developers, we provide enhanced API documentation for many of these feeds on the Yahoo! Developer Network.

Using Feeds

You can subscribe to any Yahoo! RSS feed, static or dynamic, using My Yahoo! or your favorite news reader or aggregator application. Most Yahoo! products and services provide Add to My Yahoo! buttons that make subscribing to Yahoo! RSS feeds easy. My Yahoo! also includes a link for subscribing to feeds by URL with Add RSS by URL on the New Content tab.

Yahoo! Alerts also enables you to get alerts when any RSS feed (Yahoo! or otherwise) has changed. Alerts can be sent to your email, Yahoo! Messenger, or Mobile device. To add a Yahoo! Alert for an RSS feed, visit Yahoo! Alerts and choose Feed/Blog alert:

Developing with Feeds

As a developer you can use the content within the Yahoo! RSS feed for your own web or client applications. RSS is a flavor of XML and as such you can use any XML parsing libraries to work with RSS. Please see Terms of Use for information on using Yahoo! feeds in your application.

Yahoo! RSS feeds conform to the RSS 2.0 specification. Depending on the feed and its contents, the RSS feed may also include namespace extensions. For example, many feeds include the GeoRSS extension, which enables geographic latitude and longitude information to be included in the feed. Some image and media feeds include Media RSS extensions for images, audio and sound enclosures. See Resources for specifications and the specific feed for details.

Terms of Use

Yahoo! RSS feeds are free of charge for individuals, and non-profit organizations for non-commercial use. Attribution is required if you use the feed in your own application or service. Usually this requires including text or image for the Yahoo! product or service from which you got the feed in your application. Attribution information is included in each feed. Each Yahoo! product or service may also have more specific terms of use for the RSS feed; see the RSS help pages for the service for details, if available.

Yahoo! RSS feeds may also be subject to rate limiting. The limit varies from feed to feed.

RSS Resources

This section collects links to FAQs, specifications and other tools that may help you work with RSS feeds.

Yahoo! RSS FAQs and Overviews

Technical Specifications

Other RSS Resources

Create an Add-to-My-Yahoo Button on Your Website
Yahoo! Directory: RSS Format
RSS Parsers (@allrss.com)

The Big List of Yahoo! Feeds

The following table contains a list of the available RSS feeds from Yahoo! we here at the Developer Network know about as well as some samples you can subscribe to. Dynamic feeds that take parameters also have links to API documentation, where available.

Property	Feed Description	Sample Feeds
Flickr	Many Flickr pages contain links for feeds. Scroll down to the bottom of the page and look for the "Available as RSS 2.0 and Atom" links or the My Yahoo button. Pages that can contain feeds include: Individual user pages Your contacts page Tag pages (yours, any other user's, or or everyone's) Your Recent Activity page Your Comments page Group pages (discussions, group pools) News pages Forum pages (FlickrHelp, FlickrIdeas) Feeds that view photos are specific instances of the dynamic photos_public.gne feed. With this feed you can retrieve public photos from any user or tag, and indicate the output format of the feed. See the public photos feed documentation.	(All public photos tagged with "toy") ("Catchy Colors" group)
Upcoming.org	RSS feeds for Metros, Groups, and tags. For Metros and Groups, look for the Subscribe... button at the top right of each list. This button pops up a menu with familiar RSS subscription buttons:	(Events for San Francisco)
Yahoo! Answers	Latest questions from Yahoo! Answers.
Yahoo! Education	Word of the Day.	(Word of the Day)
Yahoo! Finance	A number of feeds on various finance news topics including top stories, most viewed stories, stories by industry and sector, as well as dynamic feeds for company and industry news based on company ticker symbol. All the Finance Columnists also have feeds available. See the Yahoo! Finance RSS Page for a complete lists of a feeds and a form to create a dynamic RSS URL for the company news feed. In addition, we have detailed API documentation for the dynamic company news and industry news feeds.	(Top stories) (Most Viewed stories) (Company news: YHOO) (Industry news: YHOO)
Yahoo! Groups	Every Yahoo! group has its own RSS feed. To read it you must either be subscribed to the group, or that group must be configured to have publicly-readable messages.	(ydn-javascript group)
Yahoo! Local	Feeds for events, top restaurants, and local favorites in your area.	(Events: Sunnyvale, CA) (Top restaurants: Sunnyvale, CA) (Favorites: Sunnyvale, CA)
Yahoo! Movies	Feeds for upcoming movies, trailers, movie news, upcoming DVDs, and more. See the Yahoo! Movies RSS Feed Index.	(Movies opening this week)
Yahoo! Music	Top songs, albums and videos. See the Yahoo! Music Feeds Index.	(Top Videos)
Yahoo! News	Dozens of feeds for headlines on a variety of subjects including Top Stories, US, World, Politics, Business, Sports, Entertainment and Most Viewed, as well as for special reports such as Kevin Sites in the Hot Zone. See the News Feeds Index for a list. Yahoo! News also provides feeds for each section in Photos and Slideshows. Look for the My Yahoo or orange XML button on any photos and slideshows page. Finally, all search results on Yahoo! News can be saved as RSS feeds. Search in any news section and then look for the My Yahoo or orange XML button in the right column. The feeds for photos, audio and video are in Media RSS format (they contain enclosures for the media being provided).	(Most Viewed headlines) (Search for "motorcycle" in All News and Blogs)
Yahoo! Sports	Dozens for feeds for news, scores and expert analysis, including separate feeds for each MLB, NFL, NBA and NHL team. See the Sports Feed Index for a list.	(Boston Red Sox) (NASCAR feed)
Yahoo! Weather	Each location page contains an RSS feed for updated current weather and forecast information. Browse or search to your location and look for the My Yahoo and orange RSS buttons in the upper right corner. The Weather RSS feed is a dynamic feed that takes parameters for location and units. We provide detailed API documentation for this feed.	(Weather for Sunnyvale, CA)