RSS / Atom Feed Validator: Required Elements, Auto-Detected
RSS 2.0 and Atom are the two formats almost every feed reader, podcast app, and news aggregator understands — but they have different required elements, and a feed missing one can be silently skipped or partially rendered by a consuming app. This validator detects which format you've pasted from the root XML tag and checks it against that format's actual requirements.
Each RSS <item> needs a title or description; each Atom <entry> needs title, id, and updated.
RSS 2.0 vs. Atom: Different Requirements
RSS 2.0 is looser — a
Why <guid> or <id> Matters for Deduplication
Feed readers poll a feed repeatedly and need a stable way to tell 'this is the same item I already showed you' from 'this is new.' RSS's
Common Validation Failures
The most frequent real-world issues are a missing
Practical Examples
Catching a Missing Channel Field
A common RSS generation bug.
- 1.
Blog ... - 2.Error:
is missing required
Validating an Atom Entry
Stricter per-entry requirements.
- 1.
Post - 2.Errors: missing
, missing
What Gets Checked (RSS)
- channel: title, link, description
- item: title or description
- item: link or guid recommended
- pubDate: valid date format
What Gets Checked (Atom)
- feed: title, id, updated, link
- entry: title, id, updated
- Format auto-detected from the root <rss> or <feed> tag
Frequently Asked Questions
How does the validator know if my feed is RSS or Atom?
It checks the XML root element:
What does RSS 2.0 require at the channel level?
A
What does Atom require that RSS doesn't?
Atom requires
Why does an RSS item need either <link> or <guid>?
Feed readers use one of these to uniquely identify and deduplicate items across fetches — without either, a reader can't reliably tell if an item you've already shown up before is the 'same' item on a later fetch.
Why does pubDate format matter?
RSS 2.0 specifies pubDate should be in RFC 822 date format (like 'Mon, 01 Jun 2026 09:00:00 GMT'). A malformed date can cause some feed readers to sort items incorrectly or fail to parse the date at all, falling back to 'unknown date'.
Is my feed content uploaded anywhere?
No, validation runs entirely in your browser using the native DOMParser XML engine — no upload.