RSS news feed - a technical investigation - openSUSE Wiki

RSS news feed - a technical investigation

Peter Flodin

10 Feb 2006 10 Feb '06

23:11

This thread is about the technical solutions of creating an RSS feed of openSUSE news. Nothing else, please don't hijack this thread, if you want to discuss whether we should have an RSS feed, please start a new thread. Some observations, and possible avenues. 1. The recent changes page and newpages on the wiki already has RSS. http://en.opensuse.org/index.php?title=Special:Recentchanges&feed=rss http://en.opensuse.org/index.php?title=Special:Newpages&feed=rss We could have a News: namespace and the Recentchanges page allows filtering on Namespace so for example http://en.opensuse.org/index.php?title=Special%3ARecentchanges&namespace=100 is all recent changes in our current SDB: namespace. It would have been nicer to use the Newpages page, but this doesn't allow filtering by namespace. http://en.opensuse.org/Special:Newpages&feed=rss 2. There are things called wiki bots, scripts which automatically contribute and edit wikis. a.) Is there an existing RSS bot that reads wiki pages and creates an RSS feed? Or b) alternatively puts an RSS feed into a wiki page. This last option would still require us to have our news hosted somewhere that creates an RSS feed. Let's see if we pool our expertise and knowledge whether we can come up with a suitable solution. Peter 'Pflodo' Flodin.

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David Wright

10 Feb 10 Feb

23:56

New subject: [opensuse-wiki] RSS news feed - a technical investigation

Am Samstag, 11. Februar 2006 00:11 schrieb Peter Flodin:

...

This thread is about the technical solutions of creating an RSS feed of openSUSE news. Nothing else, please don't hijack this thread, if you want to discuss whether we should have an RSS feed, please start a new thread.

Some observations, and possible avenues. 1. The recent changes page and newpages on the wiki already has RSS. http://en.opensuse.org/index.php?title=Special:Recentchanges&feed=rss http://en.opensuse.org/index.php?title=Special:Newpages&feed=rss

Sorry Peter, but I just get: XML-Verarbeitungsfehler: XML-Deklaration nicht am Beginn von externer Entität Adresse: http://en.opensuse.org/index.php?title=Special:Newpages&feed=rss Zeile Nr. 2, Spalte 1:<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> ^ with Firefox 1.0.7 and 1.5 And Konq gives similar error, but line 2, column6. Loading it into Akregator just gives an exclamation mark (!) in a yellow circle (error or warning I guess). <snip> It's getting late, I'll go through the rest of the message tomorrow. Dave

Peter Flodin

11 Feb 11 Feb

01:38

New subject: [opensuse-wiki] RSS news feed - a technical investigation

On 2/11/06, David Wright wrote:

...

...
http://en.opensuse.org/index.php?title=Special:Recentchanges&feed=rss http://en.opensuse.org/index.php?title=Special:Newpages&feed=rss

Sorry Peter, but I just get:

XML-Verarbeitungsfehler: XML-Deklaration nicht am Beginn von externer Entität Adresse: http://en.opensuse.org/index.php?title=Special:Newpages&feed=rss Zeile Nr. 2, Spalte 1:<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> ^

with Firefox 1.0.7 and 1.5

You do know that you are supposed to read RSS in an RSS reader right? Although I did think that Firefox had better RSS support. I haven't tried but you should be able to make a Live bookmark. Do view Page Source, and you will see that the RSS info is there, and it is just Firefox that is having an issue parsing it. I have the OpenSUSE "Recent Changes" on my Google home page http://www.google.com/ig which supports RSS and it works fine.

houghi

03:11

New subject: [opensuse-wiki] RSS news feed - a technical investigation

On Sat, Feb 11, 2006 at 12:38:53PM +1100, Peter Flodin wrote:

...

You do know that you are supposed to read RSS in an RSS reader right?

Yes. However the XML Parsing Error is just that, an error. Compare the following two: http://houghi.org/mirrors/10.0_32.xml http://houghi.org/mirrors/error.xml What I have done is copied the first line to the second line. Look at them in Firefox. You will see a similar message as there is with the opensuse xml pages. (This is NOT the same error as the openSUSE one. No idea what is wrong on the second line of that page.) What the parser you use apparently does is 'correct' the code, just like IE would do with bad HTML code. Thsi does not mean that the code is correct, because it is not. When I use the RSS reader Liferea, I get: There were errors while parsing this feed. I still can see the articles. As per your sugestion, I use a RSS reader, liferea (and not a broweser to visit google). I see the name 'Recent Changes' with the 25 headlines I have set as a max. When I select e.g. Wiki Team, I do not get the Item, what I get is the following: p/* Open tasks */ added Special:DoubleRedirects/p table border='0' width='98%' cellpadding='0' cellspacing='4' class='diff' tr td colspan='2' width='50%' align='center' class='diff-otitle'Revision as of 00:54, 11 February 2006/td td colspan='2' width='50%' align='center' class='diff-ntitle'Current revision/td /tr trtd colspan=2 align=leftstrongLine 39:/strong/td td colspan=2 align=leftstrongLine 39:/strong/td/tr trtd /tdtd class='diff-context'*[[:Category:Pages to delete|Pages to Delete]]amp;mdash;lt;smallgt;Pages that have been marked for deletion.lt;/smallgt;/tdtd /tdtd class='diff-context'*[[:Category:Pages to delete|Pages to Delete]]amp;mdash;lt;smallgt;Pages that have <snip> Google only shows the link, not the rest of the content, so please use a RSS reader. ;-) houghi -- Don't worry about the world coming to an end today. It's already tomorrow in Australia. -- Charles Schultz

Peter Flodin

21:56

New subject: [opensuse-wiki] RSS news feed - a technical investigation

On 2/11/06, houghi wrote:

...

On Sat, Feb 11, 2006 at 12:38:53PM +1100, Peter Flodin wrote:

...
You do know that you are supposed to read RSS in an RSS reader right?

Yes. However the XML Parsing Error is just that, an error. Compare the following two: http://houghi.org/mirrors/10.0_32.xml http://houghi.org/mirrors/error.xml

There is a web site that checks feeds... http://feedvalidator.org/check.cgi?url=http%3a%2f%2fen.opensuse.org%2findex.... I think the problem is a blank line at the start of the file. Peter 'Pflodo' Flodin.

houghi

12 Feb 12 Feb

14:24

New subject: [opensuse-wiki] RSS news feed - a technical investigation

On Sun, Feb 12, 2006 at 08:56:01AM +1100, Peter Flodin wrote:

...

On 2/11/06, houghi wrote:

...
On Sat, Feb 11, 2006 at 12:38:53PM +1100, Peter Flodin wrote:

...
You do know that you are supposed to read RSS in an RSS reader right?

Yes. However the XML Parsing Error is just that, an error. Compare the following two: http://houghi.org/mirrors/10.0_32.xml http://houghi.org/mirrors/error.xml

There is a web site that checks feeds... http://feedvalidator.org/check.cgi?url=http%3a%2f%2fen.opensuse.org%2findex....

I think the problem is a blank line at the start of the file.

Peter 'Pflodo' Flodin.

Mmm. Most likely. I did the same with http://houghi.org/mirrors/error.xml and indeed get the same error. The fact that the message is not readable for humans is another issue. houghi -- Mandrell: "You know what I think?" Doctor: "Ah, ah that's a catch question. With a brain your size you don't think, right?" -- Dr. Who

David Wright

11 Feb 11 Feb

07:22

New subject: [opensuse-wiki] RSS news feed - a technical investigation

Am Samstag, 11. Februar 2006 02:38 schrieb Peter Flodin:

...

On 2/11/06, David Wright wrote:

...
...
http://en.opensuse.org/index.php?title=Special:Recentchanges&feed=rss http://en.opensuse.org/index.php?title=Special:Newpages&feed=rss

Sorry Peter, but I just get:

XML-Verarbeitungsfehler: XML-Deklaration nicht am Beginn von externer Entität Adresse: http://en.opensuse.org/index.php?title=Special:Newpages&feed=rss Zeile Nr. 2, Spalte 1:<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> ^

with Firefox 1.0.7 and 1.5

You do know that you are supposed to read RSS in an RSS reader right? Although I did think that Firefox had better RSS support. I haven't tried but you should be able to make a Live bookmark.

Do view Page Source, and you will see that the RSS info is there, and it is just Firefox that is having an issue parsing it.

I have the OpenSUSE "Recent Changes" on my Google home page http://www.google.com/ig which supports RSS and it works fine.

Yes, I tried opening in Akregator (RSS plugin for Kontact) as I said, and I tried to set it as a live bookmark in Firefox. Akregator just shows the site as an error exclamation mark without any text, the live bookmark has a long text which starts "Lesezeichnen konnte nich..." (Bookmark couldn't...) Dave

jdd

08:14

New subject: [opensuse-wiki] RSS news feed - a technical investigation

Peter Flodin wrote:

...

You do know that you are supposed to read RSS in an RSS reader right?

could it be possible to have a wiki page, the simpler the better to explain how to set up things in SUSE Linux? I made one for IRC (in french...), I don't know nothing either about rss and google is often more confusing than usefull on the very beginnig thanks jdd -- http://www.dodin.net http://dodin.org/galerie_photo_web/expo/index.html http://lucien.dodin.net http://fr.susewiki.org/index.php?title=Gérer_ses_photos

houghi

08:59

New subject: [opensuse-wiki] RSS news feed - a technical investigation

On Sat, Feb 11, 2006 at 09:14:42AM +0100, jdd wrote:

...

could it be possible to have a wiki page, the simpler the better to explain how to set up things in SUSE Linux?

The question the becomes, what do you want to set up and what software do you prefere for that? So perhas a list with wellknown protocols with their programs that can be used. Each program then could have the indicatoon if it is on the download version, on the boxed version, on one of the extra repo's and wich one) or external. Perhaps devided in Gnome, KDE, X, GUI and Server. Naturaly not all protocols, just the most used ones. houghi -- One seldom sees a monument to a committee.

Marcus Rueckert

13:40

New subject: [opensuse-wiki] RSS news feed - a technical investigation

On 2006-02-11 10:11:09 +1100, Peter Flodin wrote:

...

Date: Sat, 11 Feb 2006 10:11:09 +1100 From: Peter Flodin Subject: [opensuse-wiki] RSS news feed - a technical investigation To: opensuse-wiki@opensuse.org

This thread is about the technical solutions of creating an RSS feed of openSUSE news. Nothing else, please don't hijack this thread, if you want to discuss whether we should have an RSS feed, please start a new thread.

Some observations, and possible avenues. 1. The recent changes page and newpages on the wiki already has RSS. http://en.opensuse.org/index.php?title=Special:Recentchanges&feed=rss http://en.opensuse.org/index.php?title=Special:Newpages&feed=rss

We could have a News: namespace and the Recentchanges page allows filtering on Namespace so for example http://en.opensuse.org/index.php?title=Special%3ARecentchanges&namespace=100 is all recent changes in our current SDB: namespace. It would have been nicer to use the Newpages page, but this doesn't allow filtering by namespace. http://en.opensuse.org/Special:Newpages&feed=rss

2. There are things called wiki bots, scripts which automatically contribute and edit wikis. a.) Is there an existing RSS bot that reads wiki pages and creates an RSS feed? Or b) alternatively puts an RSS feed into a wiki page. This last option would still require us to have our news hosted somewhere that creates an RSS feed.

Let's see if we pool our expertise and knowledge whether we can come up with a suitable solution.

Peter 'Pflodo' Flodin.

martin lasarsch is already investigating this issue. there is even a bug in the bugzilla for it. stay tuned. darix -- openSUSE - SUSE Linux is my linux openSUSE is good for you www.opensuse.org

Peter Flodin

22:42

New subject: [opensuse-wiki] RSS news feed - a technical investigation

On 2/12/06, Marcus Rueckert wrote:

...

On 2006-02-11 10:11:09 +1100, Peter Flodin wrote:

...
Date: Sat, 11 Feb 2006 10:11:09 +1100 From: Peter Flodin Subject: [opensuse-wiki] RSS news feed - a technical investigation To: opensuse-wiki@opensuse.org

<SNIP>

...

...
Let's see if we pool our expertise and knowledge whether we can come up with a suitable solution.

Peter 'Pflodo' Flodin.

martin lasarsch is already investigating this issue. there is even a bug in the bugzilla for it.

stay tuned.

darix

Community waits for no man :-) He will probably come to the same conclusion I have. There are extensions to get RSS into wiki, but if you want to find out how to publish news via RSS from your Wikimedia wiki, you go to wikinews.org, as news is all they do. They run an external perl script that converts the wikipage to RSS. They are hosted here: http://jeays.net/rss.htm and also put on feedburner.com I think this will be the best option as we then have full control of the feed and it's content. (and can actually produce a valid feed) with various RSS versions, HTML inclusions, image inclusions etc. etc. Ideally it is run on a Novell server, so it is long-lived, but a reliable community member would suffice for me. You could screenscrape the original html http://en.opensuse.org/OpenSUSE_News but that would tend to break with site redesigns. Though we could add comments in source to the page to make it easier for the start and end of the screenscrape. A better alternative would be the use the export page function and use that as a source: http://en.opensuse.org/Special:Export/OpenSUSE_News Firefox looses the linefeeds in the XML parse, but they are there if you view source. So anybody feel like some scripting? Peter 'Pflodo' Flodin.

Marcus Rueckert

12 Feb 12 Feb

04:17

New subject: [opensuse-wiki] RSS news feed - a technical investigation

On 2006-02-12 09:42:02 +1100, Peter Flodin wrote:

...

Community waits for no man :-)

That shows your respect to other people's work. Sometimes it seems the community doesnt consider novell/suse employees as part of the community.

...

He will probably come to the same conclusion I have.

no he wont. we want to go a different approach.

...

There are extensions to get RSS into wiki, but if you want to find out how to publish news via RSS from your Wikimedia wiki, you go to wikinews.org, as news is all they do.

They run an external perl script that converts the wikipage to RSS.

They are hosted here: http://jeays.net/rss.htm and also put on feedburner.com

sounds ugly

...

I think this will be the best option as we then have full control of the feed and it's content. (and can actually produce a valid feed) with various RSS versions, HTML inclusions, image inclusions etc. etc. Ideally it is run on a Novell server, so it is long-lived, but a reliable community member would suffice for me.

You could screenscrape the original html http://en.opensuse.org/OpenSUSE_News but that would tend to break with site redesigns. Though we could add comments in source to the page to make it easier for the start and end of the screenscrape.

even worse.

...

A better alternative would be the use the export page function and use that as a source: http://en.opensuse.org/Special:Export/OpenSUSE_News

ugh

...

Firefox looses the linefeeds in the XML parse, but they are there if you view source.

totally valid behavior for XML parsing.

...

So anybody feel like some scripting?

reinvent wheels? darix - a member of this community. -- openSUSE - SUSE Linux is my linux openSUSE is good for you www.opensuse.org

Peter Flodin

11:40

New subject: [opensuse-wiki] RSS news feed - a technical investigation

On 2/12/06, Marcus Rueckert wrote:

...

On 2006-02-12 09:42:02 +1100, Peter Flodin wrote:

...
Community waits for no man :-)

That shows your respect to other people's work. Sometimes it seems the community doesnt consider novell/suse employees as part of the community.

That's unfair. I will refrain from reversing the argument to novell/suse doesn't value community technical input, by not asking the community here. My line "Community waits for no man" is a variation of "Time waits for no man", it is not a judgement that whatever work is done towards the same end is not worth anything. I understand that it is unreasonable to expect all SUSE staff to respond to this mailing list (especially over the weekend), it was to merely say that the discussion will go on.

...

...
He will probably come to the same conclusion I have.

no he wont. we want to go a different approach.

I didn't recall that we discussed this earlier...oh you mean 'we' as in SUSE.

...

...
There are extensions to get RSS into wiki, but if you want to find out how to publish news via RSS from your Wikimedia wiki, you go to wikinews.org, as news is all they do.

They run an external perl script that converts the wikipage to RSS.

They are hosted here: http://jeays.net/rss.htm and also put on feedburner.com

sounds ugly

Doesn't it! Can you believe that it is not a standard part of wikimedia.

...

reinvent wheels?

darix - a member of this community.

Darix, from your tone it is clear that I have either offended you or upset you, if so I appologise sincerely, my intention was to try to get something actually happening on this mailing list, not just a talk fest, actually set a small defined target and achieving it through collaboration. Ask people whether a web forum is good or bad, and you will never get an answer, give a problem that needs to be solved and a collaborative approach is great. Let me just clearly state, that I have great respect for all of the SUSE staff, and I appreciate that the job of trying to run (no create) an opensource project is one that would sometimes seem thankless, and unappreciative, with the community forever accusing you of being closed, not listening, too slow to provide facilities, etc etc. There is a natural us and them mindset, which SUSE staff are equally guilty of showing, but I don't think this extends to a value judgement from either side. Well I thank you all for giving me the opportunity to be here and I do value everybody's input, which of course includes yours and your collegues. I look forward to any developments reported against Bug #105496, and maybe Martin can share some of his thoughts here. With apologies, Peter "Pflodo" Flodin ps. https://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=105496

houghi

14:28

New subject: [opensuse-wiki] RSS news feed - a technical investigation

On Sun, Feb 12, 2006 at 10:40:14PM +1100, Peter Flodin wrote: <snip>

...

Let me just clearly state, that I have great respect for all of the SUSE staff, and I appreciate that the job of trying to run (no create) an opensource project is one that would sometimes seem thankless, and unappreciative, with the community forever accusing you of being closed, not listening, too slow to provide facilities, etc etc. There is a natural us and them mindset, which SUSE staff are equally guilty of showing, but I don't think this extends to a value judgement from either side.

Well I thank you all for giving me the opportunity to be here and I do value everybody's input, which of course includes yours and your collegues. <snip>

[Aplause] houghi -- It has been said that man is a rational animal. All my life I have been searching for evidence which could support this. -- Bertrand Russell

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David Wright
houghi
jdd
Marcus Rueckert
Peter Flodin