feed lookup service only returns 1 result?

[Joshua Bronson]

It looks like the feed lookup service only returns 1 result. For
example, http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/services/feed/lookup?v=1.0&q=http%3A%2F%2Fianbicking.org
gives back only

{"responseData": {"query":"http://ianbicking.org","url":"http://
blog.ianbicking.org/feeds/new_pages.xml"}, "responseDetails": null,
"responseStatus": 200}

This matches the first <link rel="alternate"
type="[KNOWN_FEED_TYPE]" ...> found in the page at http://ianbicking.org:

<link rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml" title="New Posts"
href="http://blog.ianbicking.org/feeds/new_pages.xml">

Unfortunately it doesn't return any of the others. Just wanted to
officially register interest in having the lookup service also accept
an optional 'num' parameter to allow for more than one result.

Thanks,
Josh

[jgeerdes [AJAX APIs "Guru"]]

If this is a feature suggestion, you'll want to post it to the issue
tracker.

http://code.google.com/p/google-ajax-apis/issues/list?can=2&q=&sort=-modified&colspec=ID%20Type%20Stars%20Status%20Modified%20Summary%20APIType%20Opened

Jeremy R. Geerdes
Effective website design & development
Des Moines, IA

For more information or a project quote:
http://jgeerdes.home.mchsi.com
jgee...@mchsi.com

If you're in the Des Moines, IA, area, check out Debra Heights
Wesleyan Church!

[Joshua Bronson]

http://code.google.com/p/google-ajax-apis/issues/detail?id=111

In case anyone else is interested in starring.

On Sep 11, 12:57 pm, "jgeerdes [AJAX APIs \"Guru\"]"

<jgeer...@mchsi.com> wrote:
> If this is a feature suggestion, you'll want to post it to the issue
> tracker.
>

> http://code.google.com/p/google-ajax-apis/issues/list?can=2&q=&sort=-...

>
> Jeremy R. Geerdes
> Effective website design & development
> Des Moines, IA
>
> For more information or a project quote:http://jgeerdes.home.mchsi.com

> jgeer...@mchsi.com

[Joshua Bronson]

This issue was marked fixed on 10/15 but actually isn't. I said as
much in a comment but there has been no further activity. Can someone
with edit-issue privileges please update the ticket?
http://code.google.com/p/google-ajax-apis/issues/detail?id=111

Thanks,
Josh

[Ben Lisbakken]

Hey Josh --

So I updated the ticket, but it looks more like it would be a 'suggestion' than a 'defect'.  The lookup isn't supposed to return more than 1 item, but the feed find is.  So how about trying a query such as this:

http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/services/feed/find?v=1.0&q=site:http://ianbicking.org

With a bit of modification in the query, maybe it will serve you better?

Let me know if it works.  If it does then I will mark the ticket as a suggestion and 'will not fix' because I think that the feed find would be the correct tool for the job.

Regards,

Ben

[Joshua Bronson]

Hey Ben,

On Wed, Nov 5, 2008 at 7:30 PM, Ben Lisbakken <lisb...@google.com> wrote:

Hey Josh --

So I updated the ticket

Thanks.

 

but it looks more like it would be a 'suggestion' than a 'defect'.

Agreed. When I created the ticket using http://code.google.com/p/google-ajax-apis/issues/entry, there didn't seem to be a way for me to specify 'suggestion' rather than 'defect'. Did I miss something?

 

The lookup isn't supposed to return more than 1 item, but the feed find is.  So how about trying a query such as this:

http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/services/feed/find?v=1.0&q=site:http://ianbicking.org

With a bit of modification in the query, maybe it will serve you better?

Let me know if it works.  If it does then I will mark the ticket as a suggestion and 'will not fix' because I think that the feed find would be the correct tool for the job.

Thanks for the suggestion. It's definitely a nice workaround, and it's possible I'll be able to use this instead, though I have to think about it some more. But for the sake of argument if nothing else, feed find and feed lookup do serve two distinct purposes: find takes some search terms and returns related feeds, whereas (as I understand it) lookup expects the url of an html document and returns (currently only the first of possibly many) feeds referenced in it. For this particular use case, I would want to plug in "http://ianbicking.org", and get back all two feeds referenced via <link rel="alternate"...> inside http://ianbicking.org/index.html, and no others. This seems more like the intended purpose of lookup rather than find, and I'm guessing the only reason lookup caps results at one is to be conservative. Maybe it could instead return the first n, up to a certain maximum that Google allows. If it's too much of a hassle to implement though, I can continue to roll my own for this particular service.

Thanks again for the helpful reply.

Josh

[Ben Lisbakken]

Josh --

Don't worry about the suggestion vs. defect.  Only the issue tracker admins can change that (not by choice).

Your expectations of feedFind and feedLookup are correct.  We are pulling the feedLookup results from another service at Google, which is the service responsible for indexing the feeds.  It only pulls one feed per site, and uses the first:

<link rel="alternate">

As the single feed to associate with a site.

While I agree that this isn't a perfect model, it's probably not likely to change at this point.  So I'd encourage you to rely on finely tuned findFeed requests to grab more than one feed associated with a site.

Sorry for the inconvenience.

-Ben

[Joshua Bronson]

Okay, will do. Thanks again for the quick and thorough followup.

Josh