(no subject)

[enteirah]

Oooh, this should be useful. Upon checking the Watership Down Yahoo Group this morning, I noticed they've now got an RSS feed from the site. Hence I've decided to try adding one of the syndicated accounts on Livejournal to take it's feed from it. Assuming it works correctly (they only update it every few hours so I'll have to wait), it should be possible to see the posts on the friends list by adding wd_group. =:)

Edit: It works! A shame it's only the first line, but at least it's now possible to see when a new post has been made from the friends list. =:)

Edit 2: I'm actually working on my own version of this to pull in the full posts, as opposed to Yahoo's 'first line' version. If I finish it, then there'll be a new account for the feed, and you'll be able to ignore this one.

Comments

[huskyteer.livejournal.com]

Ooh, thanks for the heads-up; now there is thunderbolt_b too :)

[enteirah]

Actually, now that I've been given the idea, I might try and write my own PHP script to construct an RSS feed of the group with the *complete* messages.

[huskyteer.livejournal.com]

Cool! Let me know how you get on. I have a smattering of PHP but it's not proving very useful so far.

[enteirah]

It doesn't look like it'll be too difficult to do. Rather than parsing the HTML pages of Yahoo Groups, it should be easier to subscribe a dedicated email account which is delivered every message in plain text, then to parse the contents of those emails. The biggest problem I can see is figuring out what to do if a message is subsequently deleted from the group (eg spam), as the original message is still delivered by email.

[loganberrybunny.livejournal.com]

The biggest problem I can see is figuring out what to do if a message is subsequently deleted from the group (eg spam), as the original message is still delivered by email.

One other possible problem - there's always the chance that some people will start to comment on LJ posts rather than reply to messages on the Group itself. It's pretty important that replies all show up on the Group, rather than being dotted around the net. Any way of getting round that?

[enteirah]

Well, looking at the spec, there does appear to be a way of defining a comments page to go with every post. Assuming it works, it should be possible just to have the 'reply to this' link point to the relevant page on the group.

[loganberrybunny.livejournal.com]

Ooh, that'd be perfect. =:)

If it doesn't work, though, then I'll just have to make a short regular posting on the Group itself reminding people that LJ comments aren't much use. (You could disable comments for the feed itself if that happens, maybe?)

[huskyteer.livejournal.com]

Aha, I see the first time the update runs one's entire Friends page gets filled up...still, neat-O.

[loganberrybunny.livejournal.com]

Ooh, interesting. *wanders off to investigate*

[enteirah]

Well, it would be better if it gave more than just the first line, as it's not much good for some of the posts.