Subject:	[WikiForum] mod_wiki RSS extension
Date:	Wed, 28 Nov 2001 12:05:49 -0500
From:	Sunir Shah shah@magmaPLEASENOSPAM.ca
Reply-To:	WikiForum@yahoogroupsPLEASENOSPAM.com
To:	meatball@yahoogroupsPLEASENOSPAM.com
CC:	WikiForum@yahoogroupsPLEASENOSPAM.com

Laurens Pit and Jeff Dairiki have been working on creating a standard RSS extension module for wikis called mod_wiki. It's getting close to being done. If you're interested, please see

http://usemod.com/cgi-bin/mb.pl?ModWiki

This looks interesting. The RDF is currently it is a draft, DRAFT 0.5 2001-11-28, http://openwiki.com/mod_wiki05.html

I tried to create an RSS feed with the TWiki commands only. The built in FormattedSearch commands create XML conforming to the standard (at least I hope so, not tested out). I had to tweak the TWikiAlphaRelease code a little so that the date is displayed properly. The result is WebRss. Well if you look at it "as is" it does not make much sense. I had to create a view.rss.tmpl skin (also attached) that produces the right XML header. So, to get the right feed you need to look at the topic with that skin. In addition you can specify the MIME type as a cgi paramter with the latest TWikiAlphaRelease.

There is a base topic TWiki.WebRssBase that is included by the WebRss topics in each web.

Examples of RSS feeds at http://www.syndic8.com/

Could anyone test this out?

-- PeterThoeny - 30 Nov 2001

Works fine as a data source for the RDF/RSS ticker in KDE...

-- TWikiGuest- 02 Dec 2001

I ran the Userland RSS validator against the XML URL above and it said everything was fine - see http://aggregator.userland.com/validator. Unfortunately I don't know much about RSS - there's an intro article at http://www.webreference.com/authoring/languages/xml/rss/1/. Are there any free websites that let you plug in your own RSS URL?

-- RichardDonkin - 02 Dec 2001

Added RSS feed to each web. Each WebRss is including TWiki.WebRssBase for easy maintenance.

See RSS samples at

• http://openwiki.com/?a=rss
• http://openwiki.com/?WikiSites
• http://openwiki.com/?WikiSites/Aggregation

-- PeterThoeny - 09 Dec 2001

Thanks for those URLs - interesting to see the different Wikis aggregated together through RSS.

• [deleted confusing stuff on MozillaSidebars, which do not work with RSS feeds at present.] -- RD

By the way, I just registered the TWiki Codev channel at http://my.userland.com/ as http://my.userland.com/viewChannel$5006 - should show up in a few hours/days. I hope that's OK, it will create a page like the OpenWiki one at http://my.userland.com/viewChannel$4791.

-- RichardDonkin - 08 Jan 2002

Thanks for listing the Codev feed at UserLand. Seems to take longer time to get approved.

The TWiki feed is not a regular RichSiteSummary format, it uses Wiki specific extensions, currently DRAFT 0.5 2001-11-28, http://openwiki.com/mod_wiki05.html . That might be a reason that it does not work with the Netscape 6 sidebar?

-- PeterThoeny - 08 Jan 2002

The feed is still not approved, but I'm sure it will be at some point! Thanks for the explanation - I'm still quite unclear on how the various flavours of RSS, RDF, etc all relate to each other, but it's very helpful to have some TWiki features (and OpenWiki) to play with.

Update: See MozillaSidebar for a working TWiki sidebar for Mozilla.

-- RichardDonkin - 09 Jan 2002

AbbeNormal:RssReaders includes a good list of RSS readers, both web-based and desktop-based - first link is a complete list from a blog site. The whole RSS phenomenon seems to be partly driven by blogging (aka WebLogs).

-- RichardDonkin - 07 Feb 2002

One note on the "flavors" of RSS:

RSS v0.91 and RSS v0.92 are part of a non-RDF fork from v0.9 established by DaveWiner and his UserLand crew, while RSS v1.0 is a further revision still using RDF. They're similar yet for all intents and purposes, completely different. Yet it's rare that I see a site qualify their use of RSS with which version is in use. RSS consuming software supports one version, another version, and sometimes both. I've had luck with http://www.disobey.com/amphetadesk for all versions, yet http://radio.userland.com only seems to want to consume v0.91-v0.92

-- LesOrchard - 14 Feb 2002

Good point about the flavours - it would really help if sites specified the RSS version. Another area of confusion is sites that call their feeds 'RDF' - a bit like calling an HTML document 'XML' because XML was used to define HTML... I've tried to clear this up a bit at RichSiteSummary, please add or fix that page if you find out more.

I suspect that RadioUserland only supports the Dave Winer RSS versions (0.91 and 0.92 mainly) because that's what he likes best, but it would be good if he was upfront about it...

-- RichardDonkin - 19 Feb 2002

How many rss readers out ther display either the title or the description, but not both. I am currently using headline viewer and I can only use one or the other. For my internal TWiki, I changed the description field to read "$topic: $summary" rather than just $summary. Could this be done at TWiki.org?

-- JohnRouillard - 08 Aug 2002

Related Topics on Other sites:

• MeatBall:RichSiteSummary, MeatBall:MozillaSidebar, AbbeNormal:RssReaders
• Pikie:BrainstormingPikieRss (list of RSS tutorials and info sites)
• Dave Jacoby's portal - great set of RSS feeds and MozillaSidebars
  • News on RSS - use the MeatBall:DaveJacoby portal to add this as an RSS feed or sidebar
• MeatBall:UnifiedRecentChanges (tracking changes across many Wikis, with Dave Jacoby portal links)