Scripts and Templates provide the only external entrypoints for retrieving data through RSSBus.  Scripts (identified by the ".rsb" extension) act like simple web services to expose feeds through RSSBus.

Each Script is configured through a simple XML-based scripting language, RSBScript, that can be used to manipulate feeds. RSBScript allows you to pass items between operations and use high-level programming constructs such as if/else statements and case statements. With RSBScript, you are effectively computing with items and feeds. At any time in an RSBScript you can create new RSS items, modify existing items, pass items as input to other scripts or RSSBus operations, or iterate through items that result from other scripts or RSSBus operations or other external RSS feeds. RSBScript gives you the power to mesh, pipeline, and otherwise manipulate RSS items and feeds using RSSBus.

Why do you need Scripts?

RSBScript is a type of configuration and workflow language that is used to call operations and produce feeds as output. 

  Incomming HTTP Request : GetCustomers.rsb?Company=’XYZ Company’

<rsb:set item="input" attr="CompanyName" value="[company]" /> 
<rsb:call op="getSalesForceCustomers" in="input" out="output">
  <rsb:push />
</rsb:call>

   Output : RSS/XML Feed of Customers from 'XYZ Company'.

In the example above, XYZ company exposes a GetCustomers feed on their corporate intranet.   The dynamic RSS Feed accepts several optional inputs and returns a feed of customers that match the input criteria.  In this case the HTTP request returns a feed of all of XYZ companies customers from their SalesForce account that come from Microsoft. While this example is pulling from SalesForce, the script could just as easily use a different connector and pull the same information from a SQL database, or QuickBooks, or and Excel SpreadSheet, or any other source that RSSBus has a Connector installed for.

The above is a relatively simple example of using RSBScript to call a single operation, however scripting with RSSBus is capable of much more.  RSBScript can wire data from different sources, applications, and platforms together; thus enabling processing, extraction, and publication of the desired information from a wide variety of sources. The above example could be enhanced to pull data from multiple sources at the same time, or pipe the search results directly to a text file for later processing. 

Don't worry though, you don't need to learn RSBScript in order to create feeds.  The RSSBus Admin console includes a feed creation wizard that walks users through the process of creating feeds and generates all of the RSBScript required to secure and expose a feed. 

In a nutshell

RSBScript is a simple XML-based (easily accessible to a wide variety of tools) scripting language (no compilation) with high level constructs (more accessible to non-programmers) designed to work with RSS Items and Feeds. It has constructs, called keywords, that allow you to fetch (rsb:call), modify (rsb:set) and publish (rsb:push) feeds.