RSS Reader and Haloscan Comments

[Andrew Lister]

I've managed to get a generic news rss feed into my TW site, using:

http://tiddlywiki.bidix.info/#RSSReaderPlugin

but I haven't been able to get the rss for my haloscan comments into
TW. The comments feed looks like this, according to haloscan:

http://www.haloscan.com/members/rss.php?user= [myusername here]

Is there a way to get this to work with the RSSReaderPlugin?

The point of doing this would be to have a tiddler containing the feed
of all of the comments on my TW (rather than just having the commments
on each tiddler available in a pop-up window by clicking on a link in
the tiddler, as described here in this thread:
http://groups.google.com/group/TiddlyWiki/browse_thread/thread/6ac8a8a698394d78/c02261322531d3cf?lnk=gst&q=haloscan&rnum=1#c02261322531d3cf
based on this plugin: http://end.com/~speth/HaloscanMacro.html )

[Daniel Baird]

I haven't done this (although it sounds like a good idea), but I think
you you will need a proxy on your web host (like BidiX's
proxy.php/cgi) to be able to reach a remote site.

Have you go to that bit yet? Post a URL so we can have a look.

;D

--
Daniel Baird
http://tiddlyspot.com (free, effortless TiddlyWiki hosting)
http://danielbaird.com (TiddlyW;nks! :: Whiteboard Koala :: Blog ::
Things That Suck)

[Andrew Lister]

Thanks, Daniel - looks like I only have the RSS working from desktop
(because I don't have the proxy set up):

http://post.queensu.ca/%7Elister/Index.htm/#Monde%20TestComment

I will take another look at RSSExtensions documentation, to see if I
can figure out the proxy.

Andrew

[Daniel Baird]

On 8/21/06, Andrew Lister <lis...@post.queensu.ca> wrote:
>

Start here:

http://tiddlywiki.bidix.info/#ProxyService

Basically, you copy the proxy.cgi and .tsallowedsites files to your
web host (it's Ruby, hopefully your host can run Ruby) and add the
haloscan site to the list of sites in .tsallowedsites.

Then, instead of giving your RSS reader the raw haloscan URL, you use
your proxy.cgi script URL, and pass it the URL to haloscan:

http://post.queensu.ca/%7Elister/proxy.cgi?url=http://www.haloscan.com/members/rss.php?user=myusername

That way from the browser's point of view the RSS is coming from the
same web host as the original page, so no security risk. Hopefully I
haven't left out any steps :)

Good luck!

;D

[BidiX]

Daniel, your explanation is perfect !

Andrew, unfortunately I thing your server is not configured to run Ruby cgi script. So you have two possibilities :

• Try to obtain your server running Ruby script. Ruby is really a great language ...
• You can configure and use proxy.php : http://tiddlywiki.bidix.info/#proxy.php on the same principle as Daniel explains.

I think the first way is better.

Cheers,

-- BidiX
http://TiddlyWiki.bidix.info

[Andrew Lister]

Thank you for your help.

I tried on a different server, which I believe has Ruby running by
default ( http://du180.n77.queensu.ca/#TWFeed ), but got the message
"Problem reading xml data: forbidden".

But I'm getting a bit out of my depth, here, and think that tiddlyspot
might be the answer, if they could be persuaded to add haloscan to
their list of acceptable proxies:

http://announce.tiddlyspot.com/#%5B%5BProxy%20service%20available%20for%20Tiddlyspot%20sites%5D%5D%20%5B%5BRSS%20works%20(for%20new%20sites)%5D%5D%20%5B%5BRSS%20works%20for%20everyone%5D%5D%20UploadPlugin

[BidiX]

Andrew,

CGI Script are note allowed on your site. Try http://du180.n77.queensu.ca/proxy.cgi or http://du180.n77.queensu.ca/store.cgi and you'll see the error.

Since you run an Apache server, look in your httpd.conf and verify that the above  line is uncommented :

AddHandler cgi-script .cgi

[Simon Baird]

On 8/22/06, Andrew Lister <lis...@post.queensu.ca> wrote:

But I'm getting a bit out of my depth, here, and think that tiddlyspot
might be the answer, if they could be persuaded to add haloscan to
their list of acceptable proxies:

 

Done. I added www.haloscan.com. Is that enough or are there other ones required??

 

 

Eg url,

 

http://tiddlyspot.com/proxy/http://www.haloscan.com/members/rss.php?user=asdfas

--
Simon Baird <simon...@gmail.com>

[Simon Baird]

I just wanted to say this could be a big deal for tiddlywiki. If haloscan can provide a reasonable solution to make tiddlers work like commentable blog posts then tiddlywiki just got about 5 squillion new potential users :). It sounds like this rss feed trick might just do it.

 

A "blogger flavoured" tiddlywiki with haloscan support built in would not be very hard to make.

 

I'd love to ditch wordpress and move http://tiddlyspot.com/blog to a tiddlywiki.

 

Andrew, if you can get this working smoothly would you like to write a little mini-howto?

 

 

Simon.

--
Simon Baird <simon...@gmail.com>

[Andrew Lister]

So far I haven't figured out how to get the rssReader to work on
tiddlyspot.

BidiX's command for the RssReaderPlugin looks like:

<<rssReader asText proxy.cgi?url=http://www.tiddlywiki.com/index.xml>>

(see http://tiddlywiki.bidix.info/#TiddlyWikiRSS)

The tiddlyspot proxy service is here:

http://tiddlyspot.com/proxy/www.tiddlywiki.com/index.html

I'm not sure how to combine the two - see my various attempts at:

http://andrewlister.tiddlyspot.com/#TiddlyWikiRss

I'm missing something.

[Simon Baird]

I just realised the reason for this is because of the new subdomain urls.
The rss plugin (like any ajax request) can only fetch data from the same host it's running from. So your TW is running from andrewlister.tiddlyspot.com which is different to tiddlyspot.com.
Just this minute I've setup tiddlyspot so that proxy works from each subdomain, ie try a url like this:

http://andrewlister.tiddlyspot.com/proxy/www.haloscan.com/members/rss.php?user=username

 

Simon.

On 8/22/06, Andrew Lister <lis...@post.queensu.ca> wrote:
>

--
Simon Baird <simon...@gmail.com>

[Andrew Lister]

Ok - the ordinary TW feed is now working:

http://andrewlister.tiddlyspot.com/#TWFeed

But the Haloscan feed is behaving strangely:

http://andrewlister.tiddlyspot.com/#HaloscanCommentsFeed

Compare:

www.haloscan.com/members/rss.php?user=adlister
http://andrewlister.tiddlyspot.com/proxy/www.haloscan.com/members/rss.php?user=adlister

The second tiddlyspot link is giving the error message "No username
specified".

[Daniel Baird]

On 8/22/06, Andrew Lister <lis...@post.queensu.ca> wrote:

> Compare:
>
> www.haloscan.com/members/rss.php?user=adlister
> http://andrewlister.tiddlyspot.com/proxy/www.haloscan.com/members/rss.php?user=adlister
>
> The second tiddlyspot link is giving the error message "No username
> specified".

Stand by.. we think we've got it right. Running updates now..

[Simon Baird]

Sorry I wrote that message before I tested. Wasn't working before. Should be working now.

http://andrewlister.tiddlyspot.com/proxy/www.haloscan.com/members/rss.php?user=username
 

On 8/22/06, Simon Baird <simon...@gmail.com> wrote:

--
Simon Baird <simon...@gmail.com>

[Andrew Lister]

The link now works, but there still seems to be a glitch in the
rssReader; it's not displaying more than the first line of the Haloscan
feed... -
<rss version="0.91">
- <channel>
<title>Comments for adlister - HaloScan.com</title>
<link>http://post.queensu.ca/~lister/Index.htm</link>

That comes across as as link to an external site, but there's nothing
after that

[BidiX]

On 8/22/06, Andrew Lister <lis...@post.queensu.ca> wrote:

That comes across as as link to an external site, but there's nothing
after that

There was a bug in RSSReaderPlugin (no pubDate not tested in an item :(

Seems to be working now : http://tiddlywiki.bidix.info/#HaloscanRSS

Get the new Version (V 0.2.2) of RSSReaderPlugin at http://tiddlywiki.bidix.info/#RSSReaderPlugin

Cheers,

-- BidiX
http://TiddlyWiki.bidix.info

[Andrew Lister]

Fantastic!

... but of course there's just one more little thing. Haloscan
provides just one RSS feed for all of the "threads" (tiddlers, that
is). Would it be possible, I wonder, to have the option of filtering
the feed to only display the items associated with the thread of the
same name as the tiddler? Using Safari's built in newsreader, for
example, I can display only the items with "TiddlerTitle", so it should
be possible.

[Andrew Lister]

I've written up some instructions summarizing how to get Haloscan
comments working in a TW using the rssReaderPlugin here:

http://andrewlister.tiddlyspot.com/#HaloscaninTiddlyWiki

[Simon Baird]

Andrew,
Nice work!!

> Would it be possible, I wonder, to have the option of filtering
> the feed to only display the items associated with the thread of the
> same name as the tiddler?
 

It would say yes it must be possible.  The default should be the tiddler's title. This kind of thing should be a piece of cake.

On 8/22/06, Andrew Lister <lis...@post.queensu.ca> wrote:

Thanks great.  I hope you don't mind, I've linked to your page here:
http://faq.tiddlyspot.com/#UsingTiddlySpot

Simon.

--
Simon Baird <simon...@gmail.com>

[BidiX]

On 8/22/06, Andrew Lister <lis...@post.queensu.ca> wrote:
>

I've just released a new version of RSSReaderPlugin  that uses an optional parameter to filter on the RSS item title. Because we are not yet able to use {{ tiddler.title}} as macro parameter, if the filter contains white characters only, the current tiddler title is used for filtering.    

See an example http://tiddlywiki.bidix.info/#TestComment     

New version of RSSReaderPlugin  at http://tiddlywiki.bidix.info/#RSSReaderPlugin   

Enjoy, 

-- BidiX
http://TiddlyWiki.bidix.info 

[Simon Baird]

That's cool. I'm using it here and it looks like it's working very nicely! Maybe I can ditch wordpress now.
http://announce.tiddlyspot.com/

I found that haloscan replaces commas slashes and quote chars with spaces and also truncates the title to 45 characters. I bet it replaces some other chars too but I don't know yet.

filterString = filterString.replace(/['",\]//g,' ').substr(0,45);

To add this to you plugin I guess you need to make it configurable via another macro param so it's not on all the time.

Thanks for your fine work to bring TW closer to a viable option for bloggers. :)

Simon.

[Simon Baird]

I meant this of course:
filterString = filterString.replace(/['",\/]/g,' ').substr(0,45);

>  Simon Baird <simon...@gmail.com >

--
Simon Baird <simon...@gmail.com>