Feed Publisher

Grahack

This 0.2.0 allows you to add a xml-stylesheet tag (see the main config file) for formatting your feeds a bit if the visitor's browser can't handle feeds correctly.
The xml declaration was missing for RSS2 feeds, now it's here.

Hey, are you all English talking people? I received no translation yet!!!

EDIT: hope it will be lite enough for you dan39 !!!

lambda

Is there any way for this to generate links automatically for each category, rather than having to manually copy and paste a whole bunch of code in categories_config.php, which I'm assuming will break whenever this is automatically updated? I am not familiar enough with PHP and the internals of Vanilla to easily do this myself, but it seems like it should be something pretty easy to do.

dan39

I'm sure there is a PHP solution to this, but just so you know, I originally left it as a manual configuration (on CrudeRSS, which FeedPublisher is derived from) so that people could easily generate custom Feedburner URLs (or other custom-feed-publisher URLs) for each category if they wanted to monetize or keep track of traffic.

Additionally, the manual configuration of category feeds enables someone to create some simple .htaccess RewriteRules to make the displayed URLs for the category feeds pretty. So, the manual configuration currently allows for more flexibility in setting up the category feeds -- which tend to get the most traffic. Also, Vanilla usability tends to work best when there aren't too many categories. So, it shouldn't be that hard to maintain.

But yes, this manual process is left over from CrudeRSS (and that was why it was called "Crude" in the first place). It allowed for more options, but the pain-in-the-ass manual set up was not perfect by any means.

Both of these things could probably be achieved through PHP, but I didn't go down that road since it was so easy to do with an easy manual set up and it allowed for easy monetization.

EDIT: If it does ever get automated, it would be nice to keep the categories_config.php file there as an option that can be activated in case someone wants to do FeedBurner and pretty-URLs and such. So, by default, the process would be automated. But, it could still be customized in a manual way if someone wanted to. That would be ideal.

You also make a good point in the meantime. Every time a new release is seeded, it's a pain to have to re-copy the categories_config.php file and check for new changes. I think it will make things smoother if the upgrade instructions are phrased a bit like WordPress's and Vanilla's upgrade instructions. For instance, on WordPress, they always tell you to keep your old config.php intact and overwrite everything else. I'm pretty sure that Vanilla is the same way with the /conf folder.

The same kind of basic upgrade instructions would be helpful for Feed Publisher.
----
@grahack, I'm sure the lightness of it will be fine...!

Grahack

Ok, sorry for the upgrade instructions, I could have said a word about it in my previous post.

1. replace the 'core' files (default.php, functions.php and global_functions.php)
2. copy the new xml-stylesheet section of the new config.php to your old config.php, or replace your old file by the new one in which you will keep the feed types you need (RSS2 and/or ATOM) => this step can be skipped if you don't need any xml-stylesheet tag
3. keep your old categories_config.php (@lambda: I'm pretty sure this file will stay as is throughout the FP versions)

tarabyte

Has anyone had any luck integrating FeedPublisher with the Blog extension? I can see that it would require another if statement and processing in the default.php file, but I'm not familiar enough with RSS to know how to really start setting it up for myself.

Grahack

This could be an 'enhancement add-on' like dan39 said. So if I guess correctly, you'd like to publish feeds for articles and comments created with this Blog extension.
Gonna install this one and have a look...

tarabyte

grahack: yep, that's the extension.

Grahack

if (
	$Context->SelfUrl == 'extension.php'
	AND ForceIncomingString( 'PostBackAction', '' ) == 'Blog')
{
	// this will tell us if we browse the forum or if a feed has to be rendered
	// ( $FeedType == '' ) means normal browsing
	$FeedType = ForceIncomingString( 'Feed', '' );

	if ( $FeedType == '' )
	{
		// some code here
	}
	else
	{
		// some code there
	}
}

Could be a beginning for FeedPublisherForBlog.
Mark explained me some usefull things about the framework and grabbing some code from other extensions, but I think that FP is not ready for that.
If you want something working right now (or about), you could copy-paste some code of FP "here" and "there". You could easily mimic FP's behaviour. Just keep the "include" to catch my functions in functions.php (publishing) and global_functions.php (browsing) in FeedPublisher's dir and not the one of FeedPublisherForBlog.
If you plan to work on this, please register on Assembla so we can follow the dev of the beast.

Grahack

Any further discussion about FeedPublisherForBlog should go here.

klod

Hi, 2 short questions : - can I limit the delay between 2 <lastBuildDate> ? I mean, keeping a version locally, beeing updated only every hour, for instance. - can I limit the number of feeds (<item>) that are generated ? for instance the 10 last... Many thanks

Grahack

Pagination issue doesn't seem to be solved here, sorry for being late.

- delay thing
I don't understand your question, sorry, please retry!

- number of feeds
I'm not sure to understand this one too
do you want to save some server load? I don't clearly understand the goal
nice idea, but why the 10 last items? do you mean 10 items in one minute?

circuit

can anyone please advise on how to replace the URL with the feedburner URL?

circuit

aha, think i found it in categories-config.php

circuit

another problem unfortunately. the plugin is inserting a blank line which is causing the feed to fail. i have checked all files and removed blank lines from the bottom... it worked momentarily and then stopped working again.

see here

klod

@grahack - regarding pagination / number of feeds, there seems to be a default value (ie. the number of comments on a vanilla page). what i would like to do is to be able to have a value for the number of feeds - I have seen that each time someone is calling the RSS link, there is a new RSS XML report generated. It would be interesting, for performance issues, to store the last report generated and to give that that feed to everybody that would ask for it in a delay of n minutes Hope this is a little bit more clear :)

Grahack

@circuit: sorry, I didn't have much time to investigate, the problem is still there ?

@klod: ok, I understand now,
"DELAY" -> you want a cache engine on Feed Publisher, why not... I never built one, somebody has tips, tricks, docs ?
"NUMBER of FEEDS" -> I still don't understand the reason for this (please explain what for), but you could try to tweak the
default.php file until I understand what you want.
Here are two lines where you could insert a condition (in the while loop)

... and $Counter 

to limit the number of feeds. The hack is dirty but maybe will do what you want.

EDIT: added in the while loop

circuit

yes, the problem is there. if you check the validator link you will see the error that describes the problem: line 2, column 0: XML parsing error: <unknown>:2:0: xml declaration not at start of external entity [help] <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>

Democritus

Hi, "we" have just started using Vanilla, and are real excited. We are using it in a private way for a focused group. I have seen the problem mentioned here several times, with no real solution or whether ANYONE has gotten RSS to work with authentication. Is this something, someone would like to directly address? (Please) I can give detailed accounts of logs, and setup if necessary. It did not seem necessary, as it seems quite a few others have had same complaint. Thanks!

Grahack

Hi everyone, @circuit Could you please send me a zip of your installation so I can try to reproduce this thing ? @Democritus I think that we have to chat a bit about this authenticated feeds, I whisper you my email.

Grahack

The trick for making the feeds public in a closed forum is to replace
$Context->Configuration[ 'AUTHENTICATE_USER_FOR_FEED_PUBLISHER' ] = 1;
by
$Context->Configuration[ 'AUTHENTICATE_USER_FOR_FEED_PUBLISHER' ] = 0;
in the default.php.

I plan to implement this as an option in the next release of FP.