Comments on: Ficlets enhanced author feed, an XSL scraper hack

By: Bill

Bill — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 00:36:02 +0000

I'm sure that many Ficlets fans are sad that Ficlets.com is no more. We are in the process of constructing Blurbtree.com a site that might be helpful for them. It's not a replacement for Ficlets, but it's a clean start and we'll build the site based on the feedback we get from the online community. Please give it a try and let us know what we can do to make it fit your needs. You can also get more information at our Blurbtree FAQ.

By: l.m.orchard

l.m.orchard — Fri, 06 Apr 2007 14:25:44 +0000

Roger: Sure… Really, the only things I’m mashing up are the author Atom feed, like mine here:

http://ficlets.com/feeds/author/lmorchard

And then, I chase down each story in the feed, like this one:

http://ficlets.com/stories/1763

You can view source on a story page and see all the information sprinkled in there – look for ‘abbr’ tags and class names like ‘pubdate’ and ‘hentry’. The pages are also valid XML, so they can be manipulated right in XSL.

By: Roger Costello

Roger Costello — Fri, 06 Apr 2007 13:54:55 +0000

Is there any way for me to view the documents you are mashing up to generate the resulting RSS document? I am particularly interested in seeing how Microformats are being mashed up. Thanks!

By: l.m.orchard

l.m.orchard — Thu, 05 Apr 2007 21:05:26 +0000

@Kevin: Yeah, I think the bare author feed is a good thing to leave alone. But, a personal author feed with comments and prequels/sequels and possibly notes would be excellent! You know, basically, notifications of significant events that'd bring me back to the site.

I'm also thinking it might be neat to gently spider through prequels and sequels on stories to map them out and track progress, but that's just a future hackery idea.

By: Kevin Lawver

Kevin Lawver — Thu, 05 Apr 2007 15:44:25 +0000

That’s fine. I think we can handle it. We’ll get prequels/sequels added to either the author feed or their own feed in the near future.

By: l.m.orchard

l.m.orchard — Thu, 05 Apr 2007 15:14:00 +0000

@Kevin: One thing that might not be cool is that this XSL hits Ficlets.com once for each story in the feed to pick up the additional info, but I try to cache the feed on my end for about 20 minutes per author... so hopefully it doesn't put any more stress on your site than I might have done manually in opening all my stories in tabs to check for comments and prequels/sequels. :)

By: Kevin Lawver

Kevin Lawver — Thu, 05 Apr 2007 14:59:37 +0000

That may be the coolest thing ever. Good job!

By: l.m.orchard

l.m.orchard — Thu, 05 Apr 2007 14:04:06 +0000

@meglar: Well, just to warn ya - FeedMagick needs a lot of work. :) I've got ideas for it, but have yet to get back around to it.

By: Coffee Powered Musings

Coffee Powered Musings — Thu, 05 Apr 2007 09:40:07 +0000

FeedMagick…

For lack of a real life outside of work I’m gonna play with a new toy. FeedMagick from l.m.orchard should provide me with a few days entertainment. Inspiration for this idea comes via http://decafbad.com/blog/2007/04/05/ficlets-enhanced-author-fe...

By: megalar

megalar — Thu, 05 Apr 2007 09:31:48 +0000

I had already decided I was gonna grab your FeedMagick source and try to do something with it but this just gives me more incentive as a Ficlets lover. I recently read your thoughts on pipes and feel much the same way => meh to GUI, especially a buggy one. It seems much more satisfying to just tell php what I want done and watch it go rather than spend 20 minutes fiddling with a silly applet.

By: 0xDECAFBAD » i (heart) ficlets, microformats, and feed scrapers

0xDECAFBAD » i (heart) ficlets, microformats, and feed scrapers — Thu, 05 Apr 2007 07:00:15 +0000

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