You can find the URL-s of the Atom and the RSS feeds for such a blog in its HTML:
/html/head/link[@rel=”alternate” and @type=”application/atom+xml”]/html/head/link[@rel=”alternate” and @type=”application/rss+xml”]
Within the XML of an Atom feed you can find a node like this:
/feed/link[@rel=”next”]
/feed/link[@rel=”next” and type=”application/atom+xml”]
The href attribute looks rather interesting, it uses these CGI parameters:
- start-index
- max-results
Actually the href used the somehow internal URL of that blog, but apparently both “public” URL and internal URL seem rather interchangeable – trial and failure “proved” that. Furthermore these CGI parameters also work on the URL of the RSS feed, not just the Atom feed.
/feed/openSearch:totalResult
/rss/channel/openSearch:totalResult
… for Atom resp. RSS.
It tells you exactly, what it says, i.e. the number of total results.
So you may very well read blog feed XML-s in small chunks, until you reach their end. I assume, this is what Google Reader does e.g. . It shows you the most recent blog articles (resp. their stubs) initially, and extends the list, when it notices, you are scrolling “beyond the end”.
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