CSCE 590: Problem Set 3

RSS News Reader

For this problem set you will implement an AJAXy multi-user RSS news reader. Your program will be composed of a Java Servlet which fetchs all the RSS feeds the users have subscribed to and outputs XML. The server should only fetch a feed once, and not once for each user that is subscribed to it. The server will store the feeds in memory (or, in a file if you want).

An important requirement of this project is that communication between the client and server is to be mostly done with the use of xhr object that will return xml snippets. Specifically, you will implement at least the following messages:

• The client sends an xhr message asking to (un)subscribe to a particular feed. The server notes this. New subscriptions require the user to type in the full URL of the feed.
• The client sends an xhr message asking for the user's feed list. The server returns the name of the feeds the user is subscribed to.
• The cliend sends an xhr message specifying that the user has read a specific item. The server notes this. (There is no need to implement "unread")
• The client sends an xhr message asking for the news items the user has not read and the server replies with only those items, encoded in xml. That is, the server cannot return a whole feed(s).

Thus, the user's interaction with you web application should never require a full page refresh.

Submission Instructions

As will all the problem sets, you will hand them in using our department's dropbox.