I’ve finished the basics of the "RSS" import system and I’m quietly pleased with the implementation. You simply choose an RSS feed, tell IPB which forum to post them into and let it do the rest. It stores the "guid" of each imported RSS item (or if there isn’t a guid, the RSS title) so you won’t get duplicates. The RSS import is checked every "x" minutes and if new items are found, they are posted automatically.
Now, on first thought you may ask "What would I do with an RSS import?" well, many things:
1) Import news from other sources into your news forums. Ideal for techie sites.
2) Import news from your own syndicated sources. Manage news in your CMS (IP.Dynamic?) and have it auto post to your forums.
3) Import your blogs into a forum – consolidate all those content sources.
4) Use it as an internal method of moving data around. Export calendar events as RSS, and import them as topics…
I’ve added some screenies to show the news I stole from CNN and the ACP interface.
To do: Allow the admin to select the format of the "show source link in post" and allow the admin to determine whether she wishes these new imported topics to be moderated (shown as invisible) or closed when first imported.
CNN News (Note the "More News" links)
IPB Forum
ACP: RSS Import Form
It triggers the forum subscriptions as normal and always attempts to use the RSS item pubDate where possible. That’s why the news is in a different order on my test forum when compared to the CNN site. They actually have it ordered incorrectly.
{ 21 comments… read them below or add one }
Very nice, you’re definitely getting somewhere!
Matt, I would make sure you follow the “standard” that’s developed to limit RSS refreshes to 30 minutes or more. While RSS is awesome, it does create a lot of extraneous traffic for the same content over and over again, if not implemented correctly. I got banned from slashdot.org a while back when I built an RSS reader for my OS X menu bar
Wow… looks nice!
“Matt, I would make sure you follow the “standard” that’s developed to limit RSS refreshes to 30 minutes or more.”
Already considered… and it always respects the channel’s TTL.
Very cool. A question if I may. Can you make the RSS feed grab topics from the subforums with a forum too? For example, I want an RSS feed for forum ID 1, and under that forum are the subforums 2, 3 and 4. Can it grab from all four for the one feed?
Very cool! I’m really looking forward to the release of 2.1.
Looks great. One question though. When is it updated? What happens if the website from which an import is going to happen is down or just very slow?
It’s admin definable, although as Tim noted, no more than once per 30 mins or you run the risk of being banned from RSS feeds.
This is a great way to have two different installations share a single set of topics, too.
If the site goes down, or is slow, it’ll attempt to grab them on the next swing by.
Nice work Matt i love this feature
Hey Super Matt __s__ (SMS) could you ask you Cool management System (CMS) to make images open in a new window? I;ve gotten used to things opening in new windows… and I always close your blog over and over… figured it wouldnt hurt to ask.
I really like this feature. I know personally I post Cnet news and news from other places, but this will save me so much work! Though I might make it go to an invisible forum where I can write it in my own words and then post it. Maybe you can make it settable to “Unapproved” or “Approved” (IE, auto post or post so admin/news poster can see) and automatically have a source?
Very cool, this will save a lot of time.
Very swish.
Quick Question. I see in the admin area the rss feed is posted into the forum as a user. I’m guessing in IPB the ‘id’ is primary for the users so to get a user from the database you use the id. It appears that you just type the name of the user in the admin cp. So what happeneds if the username is changed for that user. Just a thought.
Am sure there’s a reason behind it though.
> Maybe you can make it settable to “Unapproved” or “Approved”
Already a feature.
> Am sure there’s a reason behind it though.
When you save the RSS import stream, IPB looks up the username and actually saves the ID of the member in the database. When it shows you the form, it gets the username from the saved ID and displays it in the form.
I figured that was more user friendly than asking one to enter a member ID which is a little esoteric.
A question to stay in an integration theme : is there something done or planed to be done to retrieve a topic from RSS ?
I mean, IPB import a RSS feed and adds 2 new topics from, ie, GUID http://www.local.host/go/12 and http://www.local.host/go/13 .
It’s excellent to see on the board these 2 new topics but is there a way back too ? Could i retrieve by a query topics on the board/RSS forum the $topic['id'] thanks to the 2 GUID ?
It would be very helpfull to link the topic from a website for example and then, make people replying to the news directly into the topic.
I don’t understand a word of that.
The GUID is stored in a database along with the topic ID created for it, if that helps.
Is there any plan to import the RSS feed URL, thus when they click on that news story it takes them to the website in another tab?
You can optionally add a “Show Article” link underneath the post.
@Matt > “The GUID is stored in a database along with the topic ID created for it, if that helps.”
Sorry i was not clear at all but you answered to my question anyway.
How about integrating this with your new-improved topic marking system and creating a default RSS feed of unread posts?
Obviously there would be thq question of how you authenticate without sending a password in plaintext but I’m sure you can get around that somehow.
wow looks promising. godspeed.