Hello All,
I recently implemented Jeff Breidenbach's RDF feed rcfile that many of
us are using to create news feeds from MHonArc. I noticed though, that
Internet Explorer 7 (IE7) cannot seem to read this older format as a
valid feed when found via autodiscovery, so I wrote two new rcfiles
which seem to work well -- this one is RSS 2.0 and my previous post is
for ATOM 1.0. In testing, they both work just fine with IE7.
Admittedly, I'm not much of a coder, so if anyone would like to chime in
and refine these scripts, please feel free. Good comments and input
help the whole MHonArc user community.
Please note the following items:
-You will need to change "www.example.org", "YourArchiveName", "Your
Title", etc. in the code to be appropriate for your particular needs.
-You may need to define a MIME type for ".rss" as "text/xml"
-All times are scripted in GMT. This should work fine for most feed
readers, including IE7.
-Hint: To create this additional index (feed), look at the
documentation for the OTHERINDEXES resource.
(http://www.mhonarc.org/MHonArc/doc/resources/otherindexes.html)
-It is possible (and IMHO preferable) to continue to generate your
existing RDF file (if applicable) to support any readers who currently
subscribe to that feed. You may call multiple additional indexes/feeds
with the OTHERINDEXES resource. Alternatively, you could create a
manual RDF file announcing the replacement feed and point users to the
new feed URL.
-Hint: You will need to run MHonArc via the "MHA-PREVIEW.PL" command
in order to generate the previews/summaries of the messages needed by
this rcfile.
-Feeds may fail validation at http://feedvalidator.org based on the
output of $X-MSG-PREVIEW$ in the <item>|<description> field. If the
first character of the output is a space or other unacceptable
character, the validator may point this out as an error. In my
experience, this does not affect many (if any) feed readers.
-To add the "autodiscovery" of the feed by browsers, add the following
code to the <IdxPgBegin> and <TIdxPgBegin> (and optionally, the
<MSGPGBEGIN>) sections of your -MAIN- rcfile, placed within the <HEAD>
code: <link rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml" title="RSS 2.0"
href="http://www.example.org/YourArchiveName/maillist.rss"/>
-Chances are that you are finding this script in a MHonArc Users
archive. Current revisions and bug fixes to this rcfile may be found at
the following permanent URL:
http://www.forwardlook.net/features/rc-rss20.txt
I hope these files will be as useful to others as the RDF rcfiles by
both Jeff and David have been to me.
Thanks,
-Dave Stragand
http://www.forwardlook.net
RC-RSS20.TXT
* - * - * - * - * - * - * - * - * - * - *
<FieldOrder>
</FieldOrder>
<Sort>
</Sort>
<DayBegin>
</DayBegin>
<DayEnd>
</DayEnd>
<!-- This is a MHonArc rcfile, which is designed to
generate RSS 2.0 output.
Written by Dave Stragand, dave(_dot_)stragand(_at_)
forwardlook(_dot_)net, 2007-04-10, v. 1.0. Based
upon the original RDF MHonArc rcfile created by
Jeff Breidenbach, jeff(_at_)jab(_dot_)org, Aug 26, 1999,
v. 1.0 and David Gibbs' midrange.com mailing list archives
RDF RC file example posted at
http://david.fallingrock.net/2005/07/22/rss-from-mhonarc/
Current versions of this rcfile may be found at
http://www.forwardlook.net/features/rc-rss20.txt
-->
<!-- ------------------------------------ -->
<!-- Section 0: Configuration adjustments -->
<!-- ------------------------------------ -->
<!-- How many messages do we want on the RSS index? -->
<idxsize>
10
</idxsize>
<!-- What file shall we write the RSS 2.0 index to? -->
<idxfname>
maillist.rss
</idxfname>
<!-- ----------------------------- -->
<!-- Section 1: Specify RSS markup -->
<!-- ----------------------------- -->
<ssmarkup>
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<rss version="2.0">
</ssmarkup>
<idxpgbegin>
<channel>
<title>Your Title</title>
<link>http://www.example.org/YourArchiveName</link>
<description>Description of Your Feed</description>
<language>en-us</language>
<pubDate>$GMTDATE(%a, %d %b %Y %H:%M:%S)$ GMT</pubDate>
<lastBuildDate>$GMTDATE(%a, %d %b %Y %H:%M:%S)$ GMT</lastBuildDate>
<docs>http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss</docs>
<generator>MHonArc RSS 2.0 RCFile</generator>
<managingEditor>postmaster(_at_)example(_dot_)org (Postmaster Display
Name)</managingEditor>
<webMaster>webmaster(_at_)example(_dot_)org (Webmaster Display
Name)</webMaster>
<image>
<title>Your Title</title>
<url>http://www.example.org/images/image.jpg</url>
<link>http://www.example.org/YourArchiveName</link>
</image>
</idxpgbegin>
<litemplate>
<item>
<title>$SUBJECTNA$</title>
<link>http://www.example.org/YourArchiveName/$MSG$</link>
<description>$X-MSG-PREVIEW$</description>
<pubDate>$MSGGMTDATE(CUR;%a, %d %b %Y %H:%M:%S)$ GMT</pubDate>
<guid
isPermaLink="true">http://www.example.org/YourArchiveName/$MSG$</guid>
<author>$FROMADDR$ ($FROMNAME$)</author>
</item>
</litemplate>
<idxpgend>
</channel>
</rss>
</idxpgend>
<!-- ----------------------------------------------------- -->
<!-- Section 2: Remove any HTML left from default settings -->
<!-- ----------------------------------------------------- -->
<listbegin>
</listbegin>
<listend>
</listend>
<nodoc>
<nomultipg>
<main>
<!-- --- -->
<!-- End -->
<!-- --- -->
