Question

Greetings, I have just discovered twiki and am trying to figure out if it could be a good solution for a document management system I'd like to build.

I have seen that in twiki there are an RSS plugin and ways to display data from an external database. I want to download rss feeds and store them in a database. My question is if it's possible within twiki, that is with no external scripts, to download feeds with the RSS plugin but, instead of displaying them, adding those feeds to a database.

The database would be queried by other forms, selecting only the feeds that match certain criteria.

In other words, if I really have to import those feeds in the database with a custom script, I'll do it, but if it can be avoided...

Thanks in advance for any feedback

Environment

-- MarcoFioretti - 03 Oct 2007

Answer

If you answer a question - or have a question you asked answered by someone - please remember to edit the page and set the status to answered. The status is in a drop-down list below the edit box.

I think by database you mean the actual wiki page contents. As TWiki do not use a database, I then guess that your question means "is there a way to create TWiki topics/pages from RSS". I have done this actually to try things out, with planet http://www.planetplanet.org/

Planet is a really smart RSS aggregator that can mix feeds in any RSS format and re-emit them in any format, RSS, or others you just write templates for in a standard template language. I wrote a TWiki syntax template for it for instance, so that your script can then just "push" this to TWiki topics. (either the dirty way as file copy or symlinks, or the proper way with the command-line API, e.g: http://twiki.org/cgi-bin/view/TWiki/TWikiScripts#Command_line )

• tml.txt.tmpl: Experimental planet template for emitting the RSS in TWiki (TML) syntax.

-- ColasNahaboo - 04 Oct 2007

"I think by database you mean the actual wiki page contents" No, I do mean an actual external database. Since twiki can grab RSS feeds, and Twiki can create pages from the content of an external database (it can, can't it?)I I asked if it can also do the intermediate step, that is grab and store rss page construction LATER. If it really can't, OK, I'll grab the data with an external script, I just wanted to check. Thanks

-- MarcoFioretti - 04 Oct 2007

The HeadlinesPlugin caches external RSS feeds for speed. It would be relatively easy to cache the feeds permanently. You would need to merge new entries of a feed into an existing store. You also need to specify what feeds should be stored permanently. This could be done either by extending or cloning the HeadlinesPlugin.

-- PeterThoeny - 04 Oct 2007