Q:

How can I get the first item in a list using free marker? 

I have the following code which contains about 12 items but I only need to retrieve the first item.  How can I display the first item in my list? 
My code is:
<#list analysttest.rss.channel.item as item>
          <div>
                  <h3 class="bstitle">${item.title}</h3>
                  <span class="bsauthor">${item.author}</span> 
                  <span>${item.pubDate}</span>
                  <p>${item.description}</p>

          </div>
      </#list>

A:

analysttest.rss.channel.item[0] gives the fist item, which you can #assign to a shorther name for convenience.  Note that at least 1 item must exist, or else you get an error. ( Or, you can do something like <#assign item = analysttest.rss.channel.item[0]!someDefault>, where someDefault is like '', [], {}, etc, depending on what you need.  There's even a shorter <#assign item = analysttest.rss.channel.item[0]! > form, which uses a multi-typed "generic nothing" value as the default... see in the Manual.) 
Listing is also possible, though odd for only one item: <#list analysttest.rss.channel.item[0..*1] as item>, where *1 means at most length of 1 (requires FreeMarker 2.3.21 or later).  This works (and outputs nothing) even if you have 0 items.