XML and JSON with #List

Hi, 

Working on a project to list out new posts in the last day to increment GSA (google search appliance), but they need the results to be in specific XML format and layout for the crawler to crawl.

I've been able to make up an endpoint a text/HTML and get the output HREF. 

<#assign datenow=.now?date?long>
<#-- days 1, hours 24, minutes 60, seconds 60, ms 1000 -->
<#assign daysinms = 1*24*60*60*1000>
<#assign datediff= datenow - daysinms>
<#assign x = rest("2.0","/search?q=" + "SELECT view_href, post_time, subject, board FROM messages WHERE replies.count(*)=0 AND depth=0 AND post_time > ${datediff} AND post_time < ${datenow} ORDER BY post_time ASC"?url) />
<#assign count= rest("2.0","/search?q=" + "SELECT count(*) FROM messages WHERE replies.count(*)=0 AND depth=0 AND post_time > ${datediff} AND post_time < ${datenow}"?url).data.count />
<#if count gt 0>
<#list x.data.items as message > 
<a href="${message.view_href}">${message.subject}</a></br>
</#list> 
<#else>
No posts in last 24 hours
</#if>

I've reviewed the the knowledge base and got the examples to work, from the following article. https://community.lithium.com/t5/Developer-Knowledge-Base/Return-FreeMarker-objects-as-JSON-or-XML-strings/ta-p/184087 , 

When I attempt to to try and make this into an XML output it fails, but am missing something. If I take out the 'list' section and put in text between the response success it displays.  

<#setting url_escaping_charset='UTF-8'>
<#assign datenow = .now?date?long />
<#assign daysinms = 1*24*60*60*1000 />
<#assign datediff = datenow - daysinms />
<#assign count= rest("2.0","/search?q=" + "SELECT count(*) FROM messages WHERE replies.count(*)=0 AND depth=0 AND post_time > ${datediff} AND post_time < ${datenow}"?url).data.count />
<#assign x = rest("2.0","/search?q=" + "SELECT view_href, post_time, subject, board FROM messages WHERE replies.count(*)=0 AND depth=0 AND post_time > ${datediff} AND post_time < ${datenow} ORDER BY post_time ASC"?url) />
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" standalone="yes"?>
<#if count gt 0>
	<list x.data.items as message> 
		<response status="success">
			<message type="message" href="${message.view_href}"></message>
		</response>
	<#list> 
<#else>
	<response status="error">
		<error code="c001">
			<message>No posts in last 24 hours</message>
        </error>
     </response>
</#if>

The XML output should be something like the following, and list out all the URLs in the mime type from the list:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>

<!DOCTYPE gsafeed PUBLIC "-//Google//DTD GSA Feeds//EN">

<gsafeed>
<header>
<datasource>web</datasource>
<feedtype>incremental</feedtype>
</header>
<group>
<record mimetype="text/plain/" url="https://community.domain.com/t5/Adapters/FAQ-Help-me/m-p/1496618"/>
<record mimetype="text/plain/" url="https://community.domain.com/t5/Adapters/No-internet-Troubleshooting/m-p/1496619"/>
</group>
</gsafeed>

How can I go from what is working to an XML output? Appreciate the insight.