A Django site.
March 13, 2008

Hans Fugal
no nic
The Fugue :
» Simple RSS

Have you ever thrown together a simple static webpage, only to find down the road that you want to add an RSS feed? What are your options? Maintain an ugly XML file by hand, or migrate to a big slow messy CMS. Yeah, no fun.

Sars is a simple RSS domain specific language. This:

# This is a YAML stream (http://yaml.org) but you don't need to know much YAML
# to get the hang of it.
# There are multiple "documents". The first document is the channel information:
---
title: Foo News Feed
link: http://example.com/foo/
description: News for the Foo Project
webmaster: you@example.com

# The second and subsequent documents are items. The first line is the title,
# the second line is the date, and the rest is the item description (Markdown).
# Because line endings are important, don't forget the pipe character.
--- |
Really Exciting Title
2/28/08 12:00
This is where I pontificate
about the really exciting fish
that is sitting on my plate.

Here's a [download link](http://example.com/foo/foo-1.0.tar.gz).

--- |
Another Item
2/28/08 12:04
You know, it doesn't really matter what order you put them in, since they each
have dates.

becomes this:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<rss version="2.0">
<channel>
    <title>Foo News Feed</title>
    <link>http://example.com/foo/</link>
    <description>News for the Foo Project</description>
    <lastBuildDate>Thu, 28 Feb 2008 12:07:32 -0700</lastBuildDate>
    <generator>yaml2rss</generator>
    <webMaster></webMaster>

    <item>
        <title>Really Exciting Title</title>
        <description>&lt;p&gt;This is where I pontificate
about the really exciting fish
that is sitting on my plate.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Here's a &lt;a href=&quot;http://example.com/foo/foo-1.0.tar.gz&quot;&gt;download link&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;</description>
        <pubDate>Thu, 28 Feb 2008 12:00:00 -0700</pubDate>
        <guid>http://example.com/foo//2008-02-28T12:00:00-07:00</guid>
    </item>

    <item>
        <title>Another Item</title>
        <description>&lt;p&gt;You know, it doesn't really matter what order you put them in, since they each
have dates.&lt;/p&gt;</description>
        <pubDate>Thu, 28 Feb 2008 12:04:00 -0700</pubDate>
        <guid>http://example.com/foo//2008-02-28T12:04:00-07:00</guid>
    </item>

</channel>
</rss>

Any questions?

February 28, 2008

Hans Fugal
no nic
The Fugue :
» Simple RSS

Have you ever thrown together a simple static webpage, only to find down the road that you want to add an RSS feed? What are your options? Maintain an ugly XML file by hand, or migrate to a big slow messy CMS. Yeah, no fun.

Sars is a simple RSS domain specific language. This:

# This is a YAML stream (http://yaml.org) but you don't need to know much YAML
# to get the hang of it.
# There are multiple "documents". The first document is the channel information:
---
title: Foo News Feed
link: http://example.com/foo/
description: News for the Foo Project
webmaster: you@example.com

# The second and subsequent documents are items. The first line is the title,
# the second line is the date, and the rest is the item description (Markdown).
# Because line endings are important, don't forget the pipe character.
--- |
Really Exciting Title
2/28/08 12:00
This is where I pontificate
about the really exciting fish
that is sitting on my plate.

Here's a [download link](http://example.com/foo/foo-1.0.tar.gz).

--- |
Another Item
2/28/08 12:04
You know, it doesn't really matter what order you put them in, since they each
have dates.

becomes this:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<rss version="2.0">
<channel>
    <title>Foo News Feed</title>
    <link>http://example.com/foo/</link>
    <description>News for the Foo Project</description>
    <lastBuildDate>Thu, 28 Feb 2008 12:07:32 -0700</lastBuildDate>
    <generator>yaml2rss</generator>
    <webMaster></webMaster>

    <item>
        <title>Really Exciting Title</title>
        <description>&lt;p&gt;This is where I pontificate
about the really exciting fish
that is sitting on my plate.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Here's a &lt;a href=&quot;http://example.com/foo/foo-1.0.tar.gz&quot;&gt;download link&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;</description>
        <pubDate>Thu, 28 Feb 2008 12:00:00 -0700</pubDate>
        <guid>http://example.com/foo//2008-02-28T12:00:00-07:00</guid>
    </item>

    <item>
        <title>Another Item</title>
        <description>&lt;p&gt;You know, it doesn't really matter what order you put them in, since they each
have dates.&lt;/p&gt;</description>
        <pubDate>Thu, 28 Feb 2008 12:04:00 -0700</pubDate>
        <guid>http://example.com/foo//2008-02-28T12:04:00-07:00</guid>
    </item>

</channel>
</rss>

Any questions?

January 30, 2008

Dennis Muhlestein
nonic
All My Brain
» A Few Cool Ways To Use RSS Feeds

So what is all this RSS hype? I've known about RSS feeds, what they are for, and how to use them for quite a while. It's not like they are new or anything! It wasn't until recently that I started to actually use them though. I didn't know what I was [...]

October 9, 2007

Phil Windley
pjw
Phil Windley's Technometria
» Weather in Your Feedreader

Do you live in your feedreader? If so, you might like to get the weather there too. Just use this URL:

http://xml.weather.yahoo.com/forecastrss?p=84042

Simply substitute your zipcode for 84042 (unless you want to know what the weather is where I am). Not in the US? You can use city codes instead. The whole thing is documented on the Yahoo! Developer Network.

Tags: rss yahoo weather

September 12, 2007

Phil Windley
pjw
Phil Windley's Technometria
» Syndication Oriented Architectures

Two of the people I respect the most, Jon Udell and Rohit Khare are together in one podcast: Jon's latest from his weekly Interviews With Innovators podcast on IT Conversations. Jon has a short write-up on his blog about the podcast and it's topic: syndication oriented architectures.

SynOA was born on the open web and is now creeping into the enterprise. To understand why, just consider Facebook. It is a deeply syndication-oriented application. Although Facebook users never have to think about it in these terms, they are constantly publishing events onto a syndication bus while at the same time subscribing to aggregated feeds published by their friends. As a result, they're effortlessly yet comprehensively aware of a large number of summarized event streams. Rohit Khare thinks that syndication-oriented architecture will enable business users to achieve that same kind of awareness.

Good stuff. Rohit has a white paper on SynOA at KnowNow (registration required). It's worth reading to get the meat of what he's talking about.

Tags: itconversations soa web+services rss syndication