RSS Feed: Difference between revisions

Latest revision as of 09:48, 8 October 2012

RSS Feeds are way of publishing lists on the web, such as the latest posts to a blog, or audio files of a podcast. RSS originally meant RDF Site Summary, and was popularized by Dave Winer and the blogging communtiy as Really Simple Syndication, is now said to stand for Rich Site Summary. RSS is designed to make it easy for software, like a "pod catcher" or a feed reader to automatically collect and download information from websites that a user has "subscribed" to. Feeds can be useful to write scripts that use public websites as services to request, for instance, the latest images added to Flickr with a given tag, or to search a set of news sites for their last headlines.

Some examples of public feeds

Flickr json api key? "woman" "man"
BBC News "education & family" "business"
Internet Archive
YouTube
Vimeo ("simple api") ... is a search feed advanced only?
Open Clip Art "woman" "man"
4chan
A custom Tumblr feed creator (tumblr itself doesn't offer rss feeds)
uncovering a Facebook feed
getting at a Twitter rss feed

Finding feeds embedded in an HTML page

If you view the "Recent Changes" page of Wikipedia, and view the source you will find something like the following:

<link rel="alternate" type="application/atom+xml" title="&quot;Special:RecentChanges&quot; Atom feed" href="/w/index.php?title=Special:RecentChanges&amp;feed=atom" />

Similarly, viewing the source of an Article's change history reveals a feed.

Examples

Die Zeit

@@ Line 1: / Line 1: @@
-RSS stands for either RDF Site Summary or else for Really Simple Syndication; RSS is a format for publishing lists on the web, such as the last posts to a blog, or the latest audio files of a podcast. RSS is designed to make it easy for software, like a "pod catcher" or a feed reader to automatically collect and download information from websites that a user has "subscribed" to. Feeds can be useful to write scripts that use public websites as services to request, for instance, the latest images added to Flickr with a given tag, or to search a set of news sites for their last headlines.
+RSS Feeds are way of publishing lists on the web, such as the latest posts to a blog, or audio files of a podcast. RSS originally meant RDF Site Summary, and was popularized by Dave Winer and the blogging communtiy as Really Simple Syndication, is now said to stand for [[wikipedia:RSS|Rich Site Summary]]. RSS is designed to make it easy for software, like a "pod catcher" or a feed reader to automatically collect and download information from websites that a user has "subscribed" to. Feeds can be useful to write scripts that use public websites as services to request, for instance, the latest images added to Flickr with a given tag, or to search a set of news sites for their last headlines.
 Some examples of public feeds
@@ Line 7: / Line 7: @@
 * [http://www.youtube.com/t/rss_feeds YouTube]
 * [https://developer.vimeo.com/apis/simple#response-formats Vimeo ("simple api")] ... is a search feed advanced only?
+* [http://openclipart.org/docs/api Open Clip Art] [http://openclipart.org/media/feed/rss/woman "woman"] [http://openclipart.org/media/feed/rss/man "man"]
+* [http://4chanarchive.org/brchive/feeds.php 4chan]
 * A custom [http://jamiedubs.com/rss-feed-of-your-tumblr-dashboard Tumblr] feed creator (tumblr itself doesn't offer rss feeds)
-* [http://openclipart.org/docs/api Open Clip Art] [http://openclipart.org/media/feed/rss/woman "woman"] [http://openclipart.org/media/feed/rss/man "man"]
+* uncovering a [http://ahrengot.com/tutorials/facebook-rss-feed/ Facebook] feed
+* getting at a [http://thenextweb.com/twitter/2011/06/23/how-to-find-the-rss-feed-for-any-twitter-user/ Twitter] rss feed
-== Examples ==
+=== Finding feeds embedded in an HTML page ===
-=== Die Zeit ===
-A little script to see the current categories of the RSS Feed of german Newspaper "Die Zeit"
-http://pzwart3.wdka.hro.nl/~mwocher/cgi-bin/Rss_Zeit6.cgi
+If you view the "[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:RecentChanges Recent Changes]" page of Wikipedia, and view the source you will find something like the following:
+<source lang="html4strict">
+<link rel="alternate" type="application/atom+xml" title="&quot;Special:RecentChanges&quot; Atom feed" href="/w/index.php?title=Special:RecentChanges&amp;feed=atom" />
+</source>
-<source lang="python">
+Similarly, viewing the source of an Article's change [http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Software_development_process&action=history history] reveals a [http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Software_development_process&feed=atom&action=history feed].
+== Examples ==
-#!/usr/bin/env python
+[[Die Zeit]]
-#-*- coding:utf-8 -*-
+[[Category:RSS]]
-#import cgi
-import lxml.etree, urllib2, codecs
-print """
-  <html>
-   <head><title>Sample CGI Script</title></head>
-   <body>
-	"""
-#category_1=Politik
-#category_2=Wirtschaft
-#category_3=Gesellschaft
-#category_4=Kultur
-#category_5=Meinung
-#category_6=Wissen
-#category_7=Digital
-#category_8=Studium
-#category_9=Karriere
-#category_10=Lebensart
-#category_11=Reisen
-#category_12=Auto
-#category_13=Sport
-#Counters
-category_1=0
-category_2=0
-category_3=0
-category_4=0
-category_5=0
-category_6=0
-category_7=0
-category_8=0
-category_9=0
-category_10=0
-category_11=0
-category_12=0
-category_13=0
-#Faktor
-Faktor=10
-# Read from live URL
-f = urllib2.urlopen("http://newsfeed.zeit.de/index")
-# Read from local file
-import sys
-# Read in the XML file
-doc = lxml.etree.parse(f)
-print """<div style="font-size:{0};" """.format(category_1*5) + """>Gesellschaft</div>"""
-# Again brief review of file system paths (absolute vs. relative)
-# XPATH = super paths for documents, not filesystems!
-NS = {
-    'media': 'http://search.yahoo.com/mrss/',
-    'dc': 'http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/',
-    'cc': 'http://creativecommons.org/ns#',
-    'atom': 'http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom',
-}
-# Doing something which each item individually (maybe extracting the names
-for item in doc.xpath("//item"):
-	category = item.xpath(".//category/text()")[0]
-	if category == "Politik":
-		category_1=category_1+1
-	if category == "Wirtschaft":
-		category_2=category_2+1
-	if category == "Gesellschaft":
-		category_3=category_3+1
-	if category == "Kultur":
-		category_4=category_4+1
-	if category == "Meinung":
-		category_5=category_5+1
-	if category == "Wissen":
-		category_6=category_6+1
-	if category == "Digital":
-		category_7=category_7+1
-	if category == "Studium":
-		category_8=category_8+1
-	if category == "Karriere":
-		category_9=category_9+1
-	if category == "Lebensart":
-		category_10=category_10+1
-	if category == "Reisen":
-		category_11=category_11+1
-	if category == "Auto":
-		category_12=category_12+1
-	if category == "Sport":
-		category_13=category_13+1
-print """<div style="font-size:{0};" """.format(category_1*Faktor) + """>Politik</div>"""
-print """<div style="font-size:{0};" """.format(category_2*Faktor) + """>Wirtschaft</div>"""
-print """<div style="font-size:{0};" """.format(category_3*Faktor) + """>Gesellschaft</div>"""
-print """<div style="font-size:{0};" """.format(category_4*Faktor) + """>Kultur</div>"""
-print """<div style="font-size:{0};" """.format(category_5*Faktor) + """>Meinung</div>"""
-print """<div style="font-size:{0};" """.format(category_6*Faktor) + """>Wissen</div>"""
-print """<div style="font-size:{0};" """.format(category_7*Faktor) + """>Digital</div>"""
-print """<div style="font-size:{0};" """.format(category_8*Faktor) + """>Studium</div>"""
-print """<div style="font-size:{0};" """.format(category_9*Faktor) + """>Karriere</div>"""
-print """<div style="font-size:{0};" """.format(category_10*Faktor) + """>Lebensart</div>"""
-print """<div style="font-size:{0};" """.format(category_11*Faktor) + """>Reisen</div>"""
-print """<div style="font-size:{0};" """.format(category_12*Faktor) + """>Auto</div>"""
-print """<div style="font-size:{0};" """.format(category_13*Faktor) + """>Sport</div>"""
-print """</body></html>"""
-# urls = doc.xpath("//enclosure/@url")