Spiderweb Forums XML Feed
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Law Bringer
Member # 2984
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written Saturday, February 11 2006 17:02
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Once you get to the point where you study, have a full-time job, and are a perennial member of a round dozen or so web boards, you'll usually find you are a bit short on time. Online news sources came up with a clever way to save time checking sites for new content: They publish their latest updates as an XML feed that can be read by any number of feed readers - which automatically alert you when new things are published. I figured something like this might be useful for Spiderweb, which sadly lacks an "email subscription" feature that other systems like Invision Power and phpBB have. So I made a small script this afternoon that reads the "daily topics" list and generates an atom-formatted xml feed. It's quite rudimentary, and could use some additional features, but the xml appears to validate. You can enter this url into any reader that understands Atom. (For RSS, try FeedBurner) --- Additional options: Adding the parameter "forum=..." will get only the latest post from that forum. Adding "topic=..." will display only updates to the given topic. Example: http://www.ermarian.net/stats/feed.php?forum=1&topic=2705 will only show replies to the Mountain of Shadows (#2705 in General). -------------------- Encyclopaedia Ermariana • Forum Archives • Forum Statistics • RSS [Topic / Forum] My Blog • Polaris • I eat novels for breakfast. Polaris is dead, long live Polaris. Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair. Posts: 8752 | Registered: Wednesday, May 14 2003 07:00 |
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Shaper
Member # 5450
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written Sunday, February 12 2006 01:23
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Nice, but I'm not the type to subscribe to topics. If I don't have time, I only visit the more quiet sites. :P -------------------- I'll put a Spring in your step. :ph34r: Posts: 2396 | Registered: Saturday, January 29 2005 08:00 |
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Law Bringer
Member # 2984
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written Sunday, February 12 2006 02:23
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That's what I'd have said two years ago, when I was in highschool and had only about 4-5 sites to check regularly. :P The trouble is that it's not the "active" sites that take your time, it's lots and lots of the quiet ones (and I've already dropped many of them to free up time...). -------------------- Encyclopaedia Ermariana • Forum Archives • Forum Statistics • RSS [Topic / Forum] My Blog • Polaris • I eat novels for breakfast. Polaris is dead, long live Polaris. Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair. Posts: 8752 | Registered: Wednesday, May 14 2003 07:00 |
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Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
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written Monday, February 13 2006 05:09
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I think I could use this. I'm really only making this reply in order to test it. Hmm. How often does it update? I'm not seeing any articles. [ Monday, February 13, 2006 05:19: Message edited by: Student of Trinity ] -------------------- We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty. Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00 |
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Law Bringer
Member # 2984
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written Monday, February 13 2006 05:45
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Are you using a feed aggregator, or viewing it in a browser? There should definitely be *some* articles (possibly it's not compatible, in which case perhaps the Feedburner RSS one works...). Here's a list of the aggregators that I've successfully tested it with: - Firefox Live Bookmark - Thunderbird RSS Reader - Google Desktop "Webclips" Here's a list of readers that apparently can't use it (unknown error, definitely no validation problem however): - The Google "Personalized Home" panel - Bloglines - Bloglet(?) The feed is updated every time you view it if the latest post is over 5 minutes old. Since the active topics page doesn't display any dates, I use the date at which they are grabbed by the script. -------------------- Encyclopaedia Ermariana • Forum Archives • Forum Statistics • RSS [Topic / Forum] My Blog • Polaris • I eat novels for breakfast. Polaris is dead, long live Polaris. Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair. Posts: 8752 | Registered: Wednesday, May 14 2003 07:00 |
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Shock Trooper
Member # 125
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written Monday, February 13 2006 06:32
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I don't see any articles when viewing it in Safari 2.0.3. This sounds like a really cool idea, though it could lead to me wasting even more time here... edit: I guess that your last post might imply that browsers are broken and you already know about it. This post could still theoretically be useful, I suppose. [ Monday, February 13, 2006 06:35: Message edited by: Croikle ] -------------------- Do not meddle in the affairs of dragons, for you are crunchy, and taste good with ketchup. Posts: 256 | Registered: Monday, October 8 2001 07:00 |
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Law Bringer
Member # 2984
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written Monday, February 13 2006 06:50
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No, I mean that viewing it in a browser is the only sure way to get out errors - since the browser usually does not try to parse the xml in any way. To be absolutely sure, try this URL: http://www.ermarian.net/stats/feed.php And use whatever option equates to "View Source". If that displays a text starting with "<?xml ... something", then the problem lies with the browser trying to parse it. If not, then the feed doesn't load correctly. Have you tried loading other pages on ermarian.net? Edit: There are some problems with special characters like [TM] and Alo's m-dash. I'll try to fix this later. :rolleyes: [ Monday, February 13, 2006 07:46: Message edited by: Arancaytar the Grey ] -------------------- Encyclopaedia Ermariana • Forum Archives • Forum Statistics • RSS [Topic / Forum] My Blog • Polaris • I eat novels for breakfast. Polaris is dead, long live Polaris. Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair. Posts: 8752 | Registered: Wednesday, May 14 2003 07:00 |
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By Committee
Member # 4233
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written Monday, February 13 2006 15:33
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This is useful. Thanks, Aran! Posts: 2242 | Registered: Saturday, April 10 2004 07:00 |
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E Equals MC What!!!!
Member # 5491
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written Monday, February 13 2006 16:06
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I'm not a techie, so forgive me if this is a moronic question. Could this be used for audio files? -------------------- SupaNik: Aran, you're not big enough to threaten Ash. Dammit, even JV had to think twice. Posts: 1861 | Registered: Friday, February 11 2005 08:00 |