RSS feeds

O kind admins, is there a way to enable RSS for the forums?

 

I guess you are looking for RSS feeds into your news reader?

There is a mod for phpbb named Smartfeed which can be integreated. Here is the description:

Code:

This hack allows users to get a newsfeed for selected forums, including restricted forums if they have the privilege. This is done by using an interface program called smartfeed_url.php which creates a URL that authenticates the user with phpBB. Smartfeed is smart enough to keep users out of forums for which they do not have access, even if they hack parameters on the URL field. Authentication is reasonably sophisticated. Those who are not registered can access in the newsfeed only those forums that can be read by the public.

The URL generated by smartfeed_url.php is then copied and pasted by the user into their newsreader. The user needs to be smart enough to specify a newsfeed that their newsreader can interpret. RSS 0.91, RSS 1.0, RSS 2.0 and Atom 1.0 newsfeeds are supported.

Is this what you want?

I have been thinking of this for the main page as well. Could be interesting when there are new pianists and recordings or possible other information.

 

Yeah, that's the stuff. RSS for the forum would make sense. Also, what I'd really like is a feed of recordings posted on the public site, so I can subscribe to a Piano Society podcast!

(A podcast for the Audition Room would be great too, but maybe harder to do.)

 

I have thought of this and even downloaded the manual for how to create iTunes podcasts (they do not differ from any other RSS podcast). It might be a good idea for new recordings but perhaps to even list the entire recording structure. Not sure as I am an RSS newbie . Should not be too hard to automatically create a new RSS feed every day in an XML formatted document using cron though.

 

Any progress on RSS? I recently set up a podcast of my own. Can I do something to help here (when the blessed weekend comes)?

It probably should be automatic, no? What's the uploading process like, and can the content management software (whatever it is) help streamline it? If nothing is done this will only become more annoying for you as the site's growth accelerates.

 

What I feel one must do is to program a script which is run every night in crontab which checks for new uploaded recordings and builds the XML-file automatically. To manually create the file is not an option as that will take too much time.

 

Absolutely, it has to be scripted. I'm a competent shell scripter. If you can tell me where on the filesystem music files get placed and how, I'll work out the logic of scanning for new recordings. Send me email with details.

About the cross-references between pianist/composer/recording, that really has to get automated too so you guys don't go crazy (but likely that's something that has to be solved in the content management system, so I can't so easily offer to hack something together...)

 

I already created a script (/home/chris/bin/new) that runs every night via cron and creates a page of new recordings (i.e. audio files that were created/modified in the last month). Maybe not the last word in scripting but it does the job. Providing additional output in XML rather than HTML should not be too hard to implement.

I'd love it if pages were updated automaticaly when a new record is uploaded. But the Exponent CMS does not allow dynamic HTML, if I have understood correctly. Actually I'd prefer to create all the pages dynamically, based on text files and audio files, than maintaining them in Exponent CMS. But that will be some work. It would save time however in the long run. Sort of like Classic Cat is doing, all tyheir pages are dynamically generated by scripts.

 

Restarting this topic a bit. I have just added an RSS feed to the news module and launched it on the main page. This will not provide RSS feeds for the forum but for the site but depends on that either me or Chris manually add news. Not perfect as it would be better if the feed was created automatically once a recording was uploaded but at least a start. I will rearrange the old news page a bit to serve this purpose better.

 

Not sure that is a good idea. It would make the "News" degenerate into a listing of new recordings. We already have a page for that. Then again it would be better than no news at all...

BTW - Heard anything from schmontz about this or has he silently left us ?

 

Nope, Mr. Schmonz are you still here with is?

 

I am around! Haven't had as much piano time lately as I would like... but working on that. Great to see RSS moving forward, I'll try to add to it soon.

 

Cool, my login still works. I'll need RSS/Atom to keep up effectively during the semester, so I'll see if I can get something going here finally.

 

Hm, but I've lost track of my CMS password. Could you reset it to the one in /home/schmonz/cms.txt and then I'll change it to something better?

 

Okay, I've hacked up a copy of Chris's "new" script. Y'all can try it out like so:

Code:

$ /home/schmonz/podcast/mynew 1 html > test-new.html
$ /home/schmonz/podcast/mynew -1 html > test-all.html
$ /home/schmonz/podcast/mynew 1 xml > test-new.xml

The first two files should look awfully similar to their live counterparts (though I haven't actually let "all" run to completion), and the third is what will soon be ready to be our podcast feed. It's missing one piece of metadata, though: the MP3's duration. How are you guys-n-gals currently determining that when you post a new recording? If there's an automated tool installed, please point me at it; otherwise, we'll want to install http://www.ibiblio.org/mp3info/ or something similar.

Also, for testing purposes, could someone mkdir /var/www/virtualhost/server3.pianosociety.com/schmonz, chown'd to me, chmod 755? Once the feed has all the necessary metadata I'll want to put a copy there, run it through a validator, various browsers and feed readers, iTunes, etc., and fix whatever needs fixing. When it's really ready to publish we can rmdir schmonz and put it at a stable URL.

 

Neat, if I slap the XML feed up on my own server it basically works in iTunes, modulo track length and a few other tweaks. Guys, a little help?

 

On the server, and privately, I have been using id3tag. This does not seem to have a method to get the duration, so I calculate that from the bitrate and the filesize.

mp3info looks promising, we should certainly install that. Thanks for the tip.

Done that.
Although, knowing sod all about RSS, I really have no clue what it is you are doing ! Yes, create an xml-file, but what next ?

 

I downloaded mp3info, and it's as good as useless.... because it supports only ID3V1.x tags, and all our tags (created by iTunes or other software) are ID3V2.x.
That is a shame as it would make my life a lot easier. I have a terrible time with spurious crashes in the C++ id3lib library, and the documentation of that API really sucks.

Hmmmm... isn't IT fun :?

 

OK, so we need a tool like mp3info but a little more modern. I'll see what I can rustle up.

XML-schmecksML, as far as I'm concerned, except the end result is this case is worthwhile: someone can go into iTunes and provide the URL to this XML file once, and iTunes will notify him when there's a new recording (and give him the option to download it then and there). That's all a podcast is: an RSS feed where articles have multimedia content. So iTunes is just an example: any feed reader suffices to get notifications of newly published pieces. I already do most of my internet reading via RSS, so I think that's pretty cool, but if you haven't got the feed religion, you might not. ;-)

(RSS for forum posts would be great too, if it can be arranged, but that's a separate problem.)

 

I tried a few other tools, and it looks like we can't yank duration out of the ID3 tag data because it isn't stored there (!). So the next idea would be a command-line MP3 player that can spit out the duration without actually trying to play anything...