RSS is a bit of a mess —there are three versions, each fixing design flaws in the previous— so when I needed to generate a feed, I made it an atom feed.

I used XML::Atom::Syndication with these helpers:

sub new_atom_obj {
   my $class = 'XML::Atom::Syndication::' . shift;
   ( my $file = $class ) =~ s{::}{/}g;
   $file .= '.pm';
   require($file);
   unshift @_, $class;
   goto &{ $class->can('new') };
}


sub set_fields {
   my $self = shift;
   while (@_) {
      my $field = shift;
      my $val   = shift;
      $self->$field($self, $val);
   }
   return $self;
}
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The code looked like this:

my $atom_dt_format = DateTime::Format::Atom->new();

my $feed_title       = ...;
my $feed_content_url = ...;

my $feed = set_fields( new_atom_obj('Feed'),
   title => set_fields( new_atom_obj('Text', Name => 'title'), type =>
+ 'text', body => $feed_title ),
   link  => set_fields( new_atom_obj('Link'), href => $feed_content_ur
+l ),
);

while (...) {
   my $entry_title       = ...;
   my $entry_content_url = ...;
   my $entry_pub_dt      = ...;
   my $entry_body        = ...;

   $feed->add_entry(
      set_fields( new_atom_obj('Entry'),
         title     => set_fields( new_atom_obj('Text', Name => 'title'
+), type => 'text', body => $entry_title ),
         link      => set_fields( new_atom_obj('Link', Name => 'link')
+, href => $entry_content_url ),
         published => $atom_dt_format->format_datetime($entry_pub_dt),
         content   => set_fields( new_atom_obj('Content'), type => 'ht
+ml', body => $entry_body),
      ),
   );
}

$feed->updated($atom_dt_format->format_datetime($feed_last_updated));

return $feed->as_xml();
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