Before we can make an RSS version of our posts/index we need to get a few things in order. It may be tempting to put the channel metadata in the controller action and pass it to your view using the Controller::set() method but this is inappropriate. That information can also go in the view. That will come later though, for now if you have a different set of logic for the data used to make the RSS feed and the data for the html view you can use the RequestHandler::isRss() method, otherwise your controller can stay the same.

// Modify the Posts Controller action that corresponds to
// the action which deliver the rss feed, which is the
// index action in our example

public function index(){
    if( $this->RequestHandler->isRss() ){
        $posts = $this->Post->find('all', array('limit' => 20, 'order' => 'Post.created DESC'));
        $this->set(compact('posts'));
    } else {
        // this is not an Rss request, so deliver
        // data used by website's interface
        $this->paginate['Post'] = array('order' = 'Post.created DESC', 'limit' => 10);
        
        $posts = $this->paginate();
        $this->set(compact('posts'));
    }
}

1. // Modify the Posts Controller action that corresponds to
2. // the action which deliver the rss feed, which is the
3. // index action in our example
4. public function index(){
5. if( $this->RequestHandler->isRss() ){
6. $posts = $this->Post->find('all', array('limit' => 20, 'order' => 'Post.created DESC'));
7. $this->set(compact('posts'));
8. } else {
9. // this is not an Rss request, so deliver
10. // data used by website's interface
11. $this->paginate['Post'] = array('order' = 'Post.created DESC', 'limit' => 10);
13. $posts = $this->paginate();
14. $this->set(compact('posts'));
15. }
16. }

With all the View variables set we need to create an rss layout.