universal "feed reader" with YQL

[moshi]

when Google Reader was closed, a lot of people spent time and energy to build universal feed readers that support RSS and ATOM feeds (and more).

at least for me that was fun, but it could have been so much easier.
Yahoo! offers YQL, the Yahoo! Query Language, an API that can do a lot of cool things, one of them is the so-called feednormalizer. it transforms any feed into a format of your choice.

we can use it with the webparser plugin. like this for example:

Code: Select all

URL="http://query.yahooapis.com/v1/public/yql?q=select * from feednormalizer where url="http://rainmeter.net/forum/feed.php" and output="atom_1.0"&env=store://datatables.org/alltableswithkeys"

for more info about the supported output formats, look here: http://www.yqlblog.net/blog/2013/03/07/yql-feednormalizer-table/

screenshot-Rainmeter-06.12.2013 , 12_28_30-001.png

for an example skin and more talk about the topic look here: http://rainmeter.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=15&t=17195

[jsmorley]

Very cool. One thing, what is the point of the parm: &env=store://datatables.org/alltableswithkeys in the context of a Rainmeter skin?

[moshi]

Very cool. One thing, what is the point of the parm: &env=store://datatables.org/alltableswithkeys in the context of a Rainmeter skin?

the parameter is completely pointless for a feednormalizer query

it's needed for other queries like WOEID lookup or weather as far as i know. i still had it in and did not bother to remove it. doesn't hurt anyways.

[jsmorley]

The other question I would have is does this normalize date formats in the feed?

[jsmorley]

the parameter is completely pointless for a feednormalizer query

it's needed for other queries like WOEID lookup or weather as far as i know. i still had it in and did not bother to remove it. doesn't hurt anyways.

Ah ok. Would you mind if I worked up a more full-blown "tips and tricks" for this? I really think this could be the answer to the missing Google Reader.

[moshi]

Ah ok. Would you mind if I worked up a more full-blown "tips and tricks" for this? I really think this could be the answer to the missing Google Reader.

not at all. this is just something i found, it's not like i would have put much coding or any effort in it.

[moshi]

The other question I would have is does this normalize date formats in the feed?

that seems to work pretty cool.

for example this:
<pubDate>Fri, 06 Dec 2013 16:45:00 +0400</pubDate>

becomes:
<updated>2013-12-06T12:45:00Z</updated>

so the ouput time is UTC (as it should be.)

[jsmorley]

that seems to work pretty cool.

for example this:
<pubDate>Fri, 06 Dec 2013 16:45:00 +0400</pubDate>

becomes:
<updated>2013-12-06T12:45:00Z</updated>

so the ouput time is UTC (as it should be.)

That alone is a reason to use this over almost any other approach. Having a standard way to deal with dates so you can flag "new" stuff is possible today, but very difficult and unreliable.

[moshi]

here's an YQL example for merging and sorting multiple RSS feeds:

Code: Select all

URL="http://query.yahooapis.com/v1/public/yql?q=select title,link,pubDate from rss where url in ("http://rt.com/news/today/rss/","http://english.ruvr.ru/rss/export_all.xml") | sort(field="pubDate",descending="true") | truncate(count=8)"

i have not managed to "normalize" that yet, so it could be used with ATOM feeds as well.

[jsmorley]

Moshi,

Not sure I see a way to turn a date string from the feed like 2013-12-06T12:45:00Z into a Time measure (Windows Timestamp) TimeStamp= that I can compare with the current time with TimeZone=0.

Have you messed with converting a "known" standard date/time string into a TimeStamp in Rainmeter? It's easy in Lua, but rather not go there if I don't have to.