Plugins.SlashdotPlugin

NOTE:	This is an ObsoletePluginPackage. It has been superceded by the HeadlinesPlugin

This plugin was created for the purposes of viewing a snapshot of the current topics on the SlashDot web page.

To use this plugin, use the variable: %SLASHDOT% This will create a table with the current headers in slashdot.

Eventually, the plugin will be modified to incorporate other news sites as well. Ideas of this is to have a variable called ULTRAMODE or HEADLINES or something like that. Using this variable in the structure of %ULTRAMODE{page='http://slashdot.org/slashdot.rdf'}%

If you have any suggestions, please feel free to post.

An example of the output is like this:

	What's Up With FSF VP Bradley M. Kuhn?
	LinuxToday Astroturfing Explained
	A Visual Comparison Between XP And Mandrake
	Antitrust Investigation Into Music Companies' Online Efforts
	RoboCup 2001 Underway
	Multitasking Harmful To Productivity
	Describing The Web With Physics
	Stallman And Bero Interviewed
	WonderSwan Advance
	Is This How to Carry Your Gadgets?

-- JustinHickman - 13 Aug 2001

This is very nice. And yes, a generic solution would be great!

Some thoughts:

• The plugin has a dependency on IO::Socket, XML::Grove, XML::Grove::Builder and XML::Parser::PerlSAX. Probably better to do a lazy load of the modules when needed so that there is no performance penalty in viewing topics without RDF headlines.
• You could use existing TWiki::Net::getUrl() to read the RDF file.
• Name the plugin appropriately for a generic solution. Choose a name that does not confuse with W3C's version of RDF (ResourceDescriptionFramework). Something like HeadlinesPlugin RdfHeadlinesPlugin or NetscapeRdfPlugin or NetscapeRdfClientPlugin or NetscapeRdfRssPlugin.
• Name the variable accordingly, i.e. %RDFHEADLINES{"http://slashdot.org/slashdot.rdf"}%
• Possibly add these attribute to the variable:
  • Refresh time, i.e. refresh="300". (Alternatively offer a plugin preferences variable.)
  • Limit number of items, i.e. limit="5"
  • Search filter, i.e. search="wiki"
• You could enclose all output of the variable in the undocumented <noautolink> ... </noautolink> tags to prevent WikiWord links.
• Base your plugin on the latest EmptyPlugin from the TWikiAlphaRelease or TWikiBetaRelease to get a framework for debugging the plugin. Read more how-to details in TWiki.TWikiPlugins.

-- PeterThoeny - 13 Aug 2001

Justin - it seems there was some code attached to the original topic, but it's not visible here - perhaps you could re-upload it?

This would be useful as a generic feature so that TWiki sites could pull in RSS news feeds from other sources such as WebLogs, NewsGroups and news sites, just as SlashDot lets you add 'slashboxes' to show headlines from other sites. There are hundreds of sites out there using RSS, see RichSiteSummary for more links. I'm also working on a way of gatewaying NewsGroups into RSS format. This is the inverse of PeterThoeny's work on generating RSS feeds (see TWikiSyndication), which distributes WebChanges in RSS format.

By the way, RSS is the correct term for this - early RSS versions, and the latest RSS 1.0, used RDF in defining the RSS format, but Netscape did not define its own variant of RDF. The main problem is that people look at the RSS feed files and see 'RDF' everywhere, and call it RDF. Some possible names for the plugin would be RssReaderPlugin, RssParserPlugin, RssImportPlugin, etc - see AbbeNormal:RssReaders for a list of other RSS readers.

Also, the Ultramode format once used by SlashDot is obsolete (at least for that site) - RSS is preferred, and much more flexible since future versions should not break existing usage.

-- RichardDonkin - 14 Feb 2002

I am sorry to all that have requested this code. This is very old code, and I have not made any updates to it since I first posted to TWiki.org

I have not recently looked at this code, so I strongly advise anyone that wants to use it to make modifications to it and upload it back to here.

As PeterThoeny mentioned above, I did use an old version of the Plugin template, so this would need to be the first modification, and then, instead of using my socket connection (which was a fast solution), I advise the use of TWiki::Net::getUrl() to grab the appropriate page.

I may start work on this again at some point, but as for now, my web-host provider does not allow outbound connections for security reasons, so this plugin does not work for me.

Please post comments, suggestions, and definitly code changes.

-- JustinHickman - 04 Mar 2002

Thanks for posting this - I'll have a look at this when I get some time

-- RichardDonkin - 13 Mar 2002

There is now a generic RSS reader, Plugins.HeadlinesPlugin, retiring the SlashdotPlugin.

-- PeterThoeny - 12 Jun 2002

Related topics: RichSiteSummary, TWikiSyndication, SemanticWeb, ResourceDescriptionFramework, WebChangesInRSSFormat