[thelist] Fwd: rss feed pagination

John DeStefano john.destefano at gmail.com
Wed Dec 20 12:57:04 CST 2006


Getting back to the original reason for this post: We'd like to
transform a live RDF stream into an index of links based on item IDs,
and have each link lead to a separate page that contains all the
details for that ID, or add page navigation to the transformed page.
I don't know whether this is possible.

We're currently using Adal Chiriliuc's RSS 1.0 XSLT style sheet [3].

Can transformations can handle "POST" operations (like feeding an
option or parameter to a URL), or some other method for splitting data
between pages?  The feeds we're generating are long and convoluted,
and it would be great to be able to truncate the results and give the
user an option to view more detail.

[3] http://adal.chiriliuc.com/rss_style_sheet.php

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: John DeStefano <john.destefano at gmail.com>
Date: Dec 18, 2006 9:24 AM
Subject: Fwd: [thelist] rss feed pagination
To: thelist at lists.evolt.org
Cc: Brent Eades <beades at almonte.com>


With regard to the <tangent/> below: Brent was able to dig up some
information on Firefox 2's quirks with RSS+XSL transforms::
http://decafbad.com/blog/2006/11/02/firefox-20-breaks-client-side-xsl-for-rss-and-atom-feeds
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=338621
http://www.incident.com/blog/?p=36

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: John DeStefano <john.destefano at gmail.com>
Date: Dec 14, 2006 2:00 PM
Subject: Re: [thelist] rss feed pagination
To: thelist at lists.evolt.org, tim at hyperlinkage.com


tim wrote:
> > Anyone know of a quick & dirty way to clean up an RSS feed?  There's a
> > lot of data being sent from this particular feed, and it would be
> > great to add pagination for easier navigation.
>
> Could you give us some more information?  Are you producing the feed
> yourself?  Could you show us the XSLT you are using?
>

Sorry... not much information to go on, huh?

We're using a user ticket-tracking system called RT [1].  There is
very little information available regarding the RSS feed capabilities
of the application [2], but one of the downsides is that a user must
be logged in in order to view this information (or a user's user/pass
can be included in the URL query string).  I suggested that an
anonymous account be created, so that its creds could be passed in
such a URL for feeds, but the folks here have concerns about allowing
unauthorized users any sort of access to CGI scripts (even just read
ones, like this one).

So, their solution is to develop a local script that generates the
feed data hourly using a system account, and then pushes this data to
a static page that can be viewed without an account.  I found a web
article [3] that gives some perl code that seems to do this, but I
haven't been able to figure out how to turn the RDF output from the
application into something the perl script can parse.  And, as always,
I assume there's likely a better|easier way to do this that I know
nothing about!

Since you have to log in in order to generate a feed (and since this
is work stuff and not my own, personal stuff), I can't post a link to
an example page.  But I would be glad to generate one and email it in
a file if that would be of any benefit.

Anyway ... <tangent> I just tried viewing some of this feed data in
Firefox 2, and it seems that the browser has a mind of its own when it
comes to displaying RSS feeds: the display completely ignored the
stylesheet or transformation provided by the feed.  The only RSS feed
configuration options I see in FF2 are:
- Show me a preview and ask me which Feed Reader to use. Or,
- Subscribe to the feed using: [application]

What about another option, like:
- Display the feed using the transform provided by the feed [if any]

I actually like the default display that Firefox now shows... but I'm
not sure I like the fact that the original transformation seems to be
ignored.</tangent>

Thanks,
~John

[1] http://bestpractical.com/rt
[2] http://wiki.bestpractical.com/index.cgi?RssFeed
[3] http://www.ddj.com/showArticle.jhtml?documentID=new1013637407&pgno=8



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