Wiki:RSS

From Vermont Area Group of Unix Enthusiasts

Here's how a Wiki-to-RSS event feed would need to work.

Synopsis

One Wiki page could supply (read: "maintain") the RSS feed's meta information. This includes:

Name

Vermont Area Group of Unix Enthusiasts (VAGUE)

URL

http://www.uvm.org/vague/wiki/index.php/Main_Page

Description

VAGUE is a community organization that is both a resource and advocate for using free (as in freedom), open source, unix and GNU/Linux systems and software.

Graphic icon

http://www.uvm.org/vague/vague-rss-icon.png

Text input

http://list.uvm.edu/cgi-bin/wa?SUBED1=vague

Update period

monthly

Update frequency

once (1)

For each feed item, we need either multiple pages that are referred by one page -- perhaps the meta page (see above), or we need one page with all the feed items, but with the date manually entered. Regardless, of whether on one or many pages, each feed needs to include:

• URL
• Title
• Description
• Author
• Timestamp

We'd need to disable the feeds on the VAGUE Web site or fear confusing the users. Fortunately, in version 1.6.12 (as of 2009-04-14), the only page that has RSS is Recent Changes. The RecentChanges feed is sort of useless for widespread purposes, anyway.

Implementation

The best and easiest solution for this will likely not be with homebrewing a solution, but use something like the Wiki Article Feeds extension.

Then, on the front page of the Wiki we transclude the feed with the RSS extension.

Currently, the meeting events feed is maintained at Events in a format recognized by WikiArticleFeeds. As an example, the pages source looks something like this:

  <startfeed />
  
  Vermont Area Group of Unix Enthusiasts (VAGUE) is a community
  organization that is both a resource and advocate for using free (as
  in freedom), open source, unix and GNU/Linux systems and software.
  
  == 6:00pm, Tuesday, March 17, 2009 ==
  
  [[Tuesday, Mar 17, 2009 | Monthly meeting, general
  discussion]]. --[[User:Jsled|Jsled]] 22:42, 9 March 2009 (EDT)
  
  == 7:00pm, Tuesday, February 17, 2009 ==
  
  [[Tuesday, Feb 17, 2009 | Monthly meeting; presentation on sipX, an
  Open Source VOIP PBX]]. --[[User:Jsled|Jsled]] 15:55, 7 February
  2009 (EDT)
  
  == 7:00pm, Tuesday, January 20, 2009 ==
  
  [[Tuesday, January 20, 2009 | Monthly meeting; mini-presentation on
  the Asus EEE and the Easy Peasy Ubuntu
  distribution]]. --[[User:Jsled|Jsled]] 03:00, 28 January 2009 (EDT)
  
  <endfeed />

The RSS feed is located here:

 http://www.uvm.org/vague/wiki/index.php?title=Events&action=feed&feed=rss 

The Atom feed here:

 http://www.uvm.org/vague/wiki/index.php?title=Events&action=feed&feed=atom

Which are best written in a Wiki page respectively as:

  {{fullurl:Events|action=feed&feed=rss}} 
  {{fullurl:Events|action=feed&feed=atom}}

Visiting the Events page in a feed-supporting Web browser should provide interface elements for subscribing to both feed formats.

Subscription "hooks" (<link rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml" title="RSS 2.0" ... />) should be added to the front page of the Wiki for the events page, since there aren't any provided by MediaWiki at all by default in version 1.6.12 (as of 2009-04-24). Perhaps this can be done by modifying the template file(s) in the skin used for MediaWiki.

With the feed working, the feed is transcluded on the front page with the RSS extension. This currently, looks like:

 <rss>http://www.uvm.org/vague/wiki/index.php?title=Events&action=feed&feed=rss|charset=UTF-8|max=4</rss>

The maximum items listed is set at 4 as a boilerplate so the page doesn't get too long accidentally. As is discussed at Talk:Events, old entries should be archived to Event History to avoid this problem, too.

There were some modifications to these two extensions to work as desired. The patches for this are located at Wiki:Changes to RSS extension and Wiki:Changes to WikiArticleFeeds.

For now, the feed on the Recent Changes is still active, hopefully it doesn't cause confusion.