The RSS Feeds produced by this site follow the RSS 2.0 specification. This means they should be usable by any modern feed reader without any significant issue. A lot of time has been spent ensuring that the data coming out is properly formated and passes specifications. For the average user everything will function as intended.

For more advanced users, or more specifically those interested in scripting, the feeds have a couple of custom namespaces setup to make parsing the content safe and reliable. Utilizing these custom namespaces means your scripts are no longer at the mercy of scraping descriptions for content.

Namespace: “archive”

The namespace “Archive” is to be treated as parent namespace that defines what child content will be includes within its boundaries. In the current definitions you will only ever see <archive:shift> or <archive:vip>. The identifier indicates which subset of namespaces will be included.

The Archive tag will always appear within an item definition but after the description tag.

Example:

...
<item>
  <title>...</title>
  <description>...</description>
  <archive:shift>
    ...
  </archive:shift>
</item>
...

Namespace: SHIFT

The SHiFT namespace is used for archived SHiFT Codes. Each SHiFT Code will contain 5 different tags that includes the SHiFT Code, the Game it is for, the platform for the game, when the code expires and what you are rewarded with for using the code.

SHiFT Code Example:

<archive:shift>
  <shift:game>Borderlands 3</shift:game>
  <shift:platform>Universal</shift:platform>
  <shift:reward>1 Gold Key</shift:reward>
  <shift:expires>02 Jan 2006 15:04:05 -0400</shift:expires>
  <shift:code>3P5T3-1ND1D-NTK1L-LH1M5-3LF00</shift:code>
</archive:shift>

Notes: Platform will say “Universal” if the code is available on all platforms the game is distributed on. Otherwise it will say “Playstation”, “XBox”, “Steam”, “Epic”, etc. The Expires date will always be in the display format unless the expiration is unknown. In the event of a permanent code or semi-permanent code the expiration will say “Unknown”.

Namespace: VIP

To compliment the SHiFT namespace is the VIP namespace. This is used when new Vault Insider Program codes are published. Each VIP Code will contain 4 different tags that include the Platform (button type), the Reward, an expiration date and the actual code.

VIP Vault Code Example:

<archive:vip>
  <vip:platform>vault</vip:platform>
  <vip:reward>250 points</vip:reward>
  <vip:expires>02 Jan 2006 15:04:05 -0400</vip:expires>
  <vip:code>YESJUSTIN</vip:code>
</archive:vip>

Notes: The platform will always match the redemption button. For example vault, email, creator, boost, pax, etc and it should always be lowercase. The expiration date will either say “Unknown” for codes with no known expiration or it will have a date formatted string that matches the pattern in the above example.

Usage Requirements

When utilizing these feeds in your application there are a few things required of you

  1. Use reasonable client-side caching to avoid overwhelming the feed server. Codes always last at least a few hours theres no need to check every 60 seconds. Your will be blocked if you abuse the feed.

  2. Provide credit a link back to the website somewhere reasonable in your application. For example add “Data provided by Orcicorn’s SHiFT and VIP Code archive” to your About Dialog and link it back to this site.

  3. When linking codes back to the site, use the addresses provided in the feed. It simply appends some query strings to keep analytics organized.

Help and Support

The above documentation outlines all the custom namespace changes to the RSS Feeds published on this site. If there are any issues or you have comments and suggestions please reach out to Orcicorn on Twitter or via email