Aggregating RSS feeds: how I chose the aggregator
For several years I have been collecting Russian-language testing blogs. And at some point, looking at the English-speaking aggregators, I decided to make the same mix from my collection.
At the moment I managed to collect 27 blogs, either completely devoted to software testing, or those where there is a corresponding highlighted category. The updated list can be found here: software-testing.ru/about/blogs , so if you want to add only separate blogs to your RSS reader, you can go and select a couple.
And under the cut - a description of how I did it and what a rake at the same time met on my way (with pictures).
I set the task for myself as follows: Make one of several RSS / Atom feeds one into which all the records from different feeds will be collected and arranged in time. In addition, it should be possible to cut the length of the aggregated tape to the desired size and trim too long entries, also to some specified size.
')
It looks easy, but it was not there ...
Of the several aggregators I have tried, only Yahoo! Pipes, and he couldn’t do everything that I wanted (a slightly trimmed version of my Wishlist was formulated above). Perhaps some problems have already been fixed, if this is the case - I apologize in advance to the authors of the relevant aggregators.
At first, I was visited by a crazy thought - to share all the blogs I had gathered in Google Reader, I saw such a button there. However, upon closer inspection, it turned out that it was possible to rassharivat only separate entries, it is impossible to automatically share the entire tape, so the googlider left the race without having time to start. Here is an excerpt from the documentation:
Fidinformer has a limitation - you can mix up to 100 tapes, but it suited me completely. The interface seemed convenient, so I used it successfully for several days, but I was in for a surprise - the aggregated tape was not updated. There were new entries in the original tapes - but not in the aggregated ones.
It turned out that there is a “mainstream” way of publishing, with the help of a special widget, and if you use it, everything is updated quite adequately. But if you publish only the RSS feed, the update does not occur. I didn't need the widget, so the feedformer also flew to the trash.
This aggregator refused to work with the Cyrillic alphabet, for which he was immediately banned, without clarifying its functionality.
This is generally something! Not only did he not support the Cyrillic alphabet, he SO mixed up blog entries that I could not even guess what principle he was trying to sort out. One word is a mixer. In the furnace without question!
It’s a stunningly powerful combine that can do various cool things with RSS, even read aloud. But I only needed to aggregate several tapes. And of course he could do it, but I could not get him to make the records have both description and content. No customization options! With great regret, I had to give up the exfruits ...
This is the winner of the race aggregators. For several years, he has officially been listed as a beta, but this does not affect stability. Of course, even here I used far from all the functionality, because this is also a monster, but I had to solve a simple little problem.
In general, the result was such a thing:
The result of this design is an aggregated tape, which includes all records from all tapes. They turned out to be quite a lot there, so another one was made that snapped the result of the first tape and cut it off:
Why was this done? The fact is that Yahoo! Pipes has its own troubles. First, it badly caches tapes, so it works relatively slowly. No cache setting options were found. Secondly, the result of his work is crookedly displayed in some RSS-readers (people complained).
Therefore, it was decided to additionally pass the feed through FeedBurner. He, in turn, was frightened and refused to accept a tape with more than 500 records at the entrance. Well, that had to be cut off.
The result was:
- full aggregated tape , unloaded from Yahoo! Pipes, a little brake (due to the large size and poor caching) and slightly incompatible with some RSS readers;
- aggregated tape trimmed to 50 entries , passed through FeedBurner to increase performance and compatibility;
- a web page containing fresh entries from an aggregated feed for those who for one reason or another do not use RSS readers (for example, for search engines), however sticking an RSS feed into Joomla is a subject of a separate conversation.
Summary: at the moment I could not find a single solution that would cope even with such a simple task of aggregation of information, I had to combine two solutions. However, I do not consider this a serious problem, specialization and the possibility of combining services is more likely than a minus. It is much more depressing that the overwhelming majority of services were simply untenable, in particular, when processing Russian-language information.
At the moment I managed to collect 27 blogs, either completely devoted to software testing, or those where there is a corresponding highlighted category. The updated list can be found here: software-testing.ru/about/blogs , so if you want to add only separate blogs to your RSS reader, you can go and select a couple.
And under the cut - a description of how I did it and what a rake at the same time met on my way (with pictures).
I set the task for myself as follows: Make one of several RSS / Atom feeds one into which all the records from different feeds will be collected and arranged in time. In addition, it should be possible to cut the length of the aggregated tape to the desired size and trim too long entries, also to some specified size.
')
It looks easy, but it was not there ...
Of the several aggregators I have tried, only Yahoo! Pipes, and he couldn’t do everything that I wanted (a slightly trimmed version of my Wishlist was formulated above). Perhaps some problems have already been fixed, if this is the case - I apologize in advance to the authors of the relevant aggregators.
Google Reader, shared records
At first, I was visited by a crazy thought - to share all the blogs I had gathered in Google Reader, I saw such a button there. However, upon closer inspection, it turned out that it was possible to rassharivat only separate entries, it is impossible to automatically share the entire tape, so the googlider left the race without having time to start. Here is an excerpt from the documentation:
6. Can I customize my open page?
Unfortunately, at present you can not configure your open page, you can only choose which records to share.
feed.informer - feed.informer.com
Fidinformer has a limitation - you can mix up to 100 tapes, but it suited me completely. The interface seemed convenient, so I used it successfully for several days, but I was in for a surprise - the aggregated tape was not updated. There were new entries in the original tapes - but not in the aggregated ones.It turned out that there is a “mainstream” way of publishing, with the help of a special widget, and if you use it, everything is updated quite adequately. But if you publish only the RSS feed, the update does not occur. I didn't need the widget, so the feedformer also flew to the trash.
Feed Rinse - feedrinse.com
This aggregator refused to work with the Cyrillic alphabet, for which he was immediately banned, without clarifying its functionality.
RSS Mix - www.rssmix.com
This is generally something! Not only did he not support the Cyrillic alphabet, he SO mixed up blog entries that I could not even guess what principle he was trying to sort out. One word is a mixer. In the furnace without question!
XFruits - xfruits.com
It’s a stunningly powerful combine that can do various cool things with RSS, even read aloud. But I only needed to aggregate several tapes. And of course he could do it, but I could not get him to make the records have both description and content. No customization options! With great regret, I had to give up the exfruits ...Yahoo! Pipes - pipes.yahoo.com
This is the winner of the race aggregators. For several years, he has officially been listed as a beta, but this does not affect stability. Of course, even here I used far from all the functionality, because this is also a monster, but I had to solve a simple little problem.In general, the result was such a thing:
The result of this design is an aggregated tape, which includes all records from all tapes. They turned out to be quite a lot there, so another one was made that snapped the result of the first tape and cut it off:
Why was this done? The fact is that Yahoo! Pipes has its own troubles. First, it badly caches tapes, so it works relatively slowly. No cache setting options were found. Secondly, the result of his work is crookedly displayed in some RSS-readers (people complained).
Therefore, it was decided to additionally pass the feed through FeedBurner. He, in turn, was frightened and refused to accept a tape with more than 500 records at the entrance. Well, that had to be cut off.
The result was:
- full aggregated tape , unloaded from Yahoo! Pipes, a little brake (due to the large size and poor caching) and slightly incompatible with some RSS readers;
- aggregated tape trimmed to 50 entries , passed through FeedBurner to increase performance and compatibility;
- a web page containing fresh entries from an aggregated feed for those who for one reason or another do not use RSS readers (for example, for search engines), however sticking an RSS feed into Joomla is a subject of a separate conversation.
Summary: at the moment I could not find a single solution that would cope even with such a simple task of aggregation of information, I had to combine two solutions. However, I do not consider this a serious problem, specialization and the possibility of combining services is more likely than a minus. It is much more depressing that the overwhelming majority of services were simply untenable, in particular, when processing Russian-language information.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/288768/
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