Comparison of the RSS and Atom tags

Comparison of the syntax and formats of Atom and RSS feed in version RDF 1.0 and 2.0.

The tag of the container

	Atom	RSS 2.0	RSS 1.0
Container	-	rss	RDF

Atom does not have a container. RSS RDF has for container a tag with a namespace:

<rdf:RDF 
  xmlns:rdf="http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#"
  xmlns="http://purl.org/rss/1.0/"
>

The channel tag

	Atom	RSS 2.0	RSS 1.0
Container	feed	channel	channel
Title	title	title	title
URL	link	link	link
Summary	subtitle	description	description
Date	updated	lastBuildDate	dc:date
Logo	icon	image	image
Author	author	managingEditor	-

The RSS 1.0 does not have date tag in the standard, this can be added with an optional plug-in as Dublin Core.

The item tag

	Atom	RSS 2.0	RSS 1.0
Container	entry	item	item
Title	title	title	title
URL	link	link	link
Description	summary	description	description
Date	updated	pubDate	dc:date
Image	logo	-	image

As for the channel, the Atom format has an updated tag for the last modified date and published tag for the date of first publication. Only the first really seems useful to a feed.

The image tag

	Atom	RSS 2.0	RSS 1.0
Container	Logo	image	image
Title		title	title
Article URL		link	link
URL image file		url	url

The Atom format also uses icon which involves a favicon.

References

Specifications of the standards.