RSS News Feeds

Find out What's New

There are several ways to find out what's new in each web:

Visit WebChanges to see recent changes
Subscribe in WebNotify to get notified of recent changes by e-mail
Use a news reader such as Foswiki:Extensions/HeadlinesPlugin to display the recent changes
- The source can be an RSS 1.0 feed (WebRss) or ATOM 1.0 feed (WebAtom)

RSS Feed Usage

The URL for an RSS feed is http://biostat1478.dhcp.mc.vanderbilt.edu/foswiki/bin/view/<web>/WebRss
For this System web it is http://biostat1478.dhcp.mc.vanderbilt.edu/foswiki/bin/view/System/WebRss
You can also create a custom feed based on a search. Add a search=value parameter to the URL, e.g. http://biostat1478.dhcp.mc.vanderbilt.edu/foswiki/bin/view/System/WebRss?search=plugin is a what's new feed about Plugins.

RSS Feed Internals

Each web has a WebRss topic which includes part of this WebRssBase topic. This topic is the base for the RSS feed and generates an RSS 1.0 feed.

The WebRss topic in each web contains the following text:

<channel rdf:about="%SCRIPTURL{"view"}%/%BASEWEB%">
  <title>%WIKITOOLNAME%'s <nop>%BASEWEB% web</title>
  <link>%SCRIPTURL{"view"}%/%BASEWEB%</link>
  <description><literal>%MAKETEXT{"The [_1] web of [_2]." args="%WEB%,%WIKITOOLNAME%"}% %WEBSUMMARY%</literal></description>
%INCLUDE{"System.WebRssBase"}% <!--
   * Set SKIN = rss
   * Set COVER = rss
-->

Note: The description is expanded from the %WEB%, %WIKITOOLNAME% and %WEBSUMMARY% macros. These must expand to plain text with no links or html markup. <literal> is used to avoid links if the web name or any of the macros expand to include WikiWords or other markup.

The part below is included by each WebRss topic:

%STARTINCLUDE%<image rdf:resource="%WIKILOGOIMG%" />
  <dc:language>en-us</dc:language>
  <dc:rights>%WEBRSSCOPYRIGHT%</dc:rights>
  <dc:publisher>%WIKIWEBMASTERNAME% [%WIKIWEBMASTER%]</dc:publisher>
  <dc:creator>The contributing authors of %WIKITOOLNAME%</dc:creator>
  <dc:source>%WIKITOOLNAME%</dc:source>
  <items>
    <rdf:Seq>
%SEARCH{
  "%URLPARAM{"search" encode="entities, quote" default=".*" }%"
  decode="entities"
  web="%URLPARAM{"web" encode="safe, quote" default="%BASEWEB%" }%"
  excludetopic="%URLPARAM{"excludetopic" encode="safe, quote" default="%STATISTICSTOPIC%" }%"
  type="%URLPARAM{"type" encode="safe, quote" default="regex" }%"
  nosearch="on"
  order="modified"
  reverse="on"
  nototal="on"
  limit="%URLPARAM{"limit" encode="safe, quote" default="16" }%"
  scope="%URLPARAM{"scope" encode="safe, quote" default="text" }%"
  casesensitive="%URLPARAM{"casesensitive" encode="safe, quote" default="on" }%"
  date="%URLPARAM{"date" encode="safe, quote" default="" }%"
  format="      <rdf:li rdf:resource=\"%SCRIPTURL{"view"}%/$web/$topic\" />"
 }%
    </rdf:Seq>
  </items>
</channel>
<image rdf:about="%WIKILOGOIMG%">
  <title>%WIKILOGOALT%.%BASEWEB%</title>
  <link>%SCRIPTURL{"view"}%/%BASEWEB%</link>
  <url>%WIKILOGOIMG%</url>
</image>
%SEARCH{
  "%URLPARAM{"search" encode="entities, quote" default=".*" }%"
  decode="entities"
  web="%URLPARAM{"web" encode="safe, quote" default="%BASEWEB%" }%"
  excludetopic="%URLPARAM{"excludetopic" encode="safe, quote" default="%STATISTICSTOPIC%" }%"
  type="%URLPARAM{"type" encode="safe, quote" default="regex" }%"
  nosearch="on"
  order="modified"
  reverse="on"
  nototal="on"
  limit="%URLPARAM{"limit" encode="safe, quote" default="16" }%"
  scope="%URLPARAM{"scope" encode="safe, quote" default="text" }%"
  casesensitive="%URLPARAM{"casesensitive" encode="safe, quote" default="on" }%"
  date="%URLPARAM{"date" encode="safe, quote" default="" }%"
  format="<item rdf:about=\"%SCRIPTURL{"view"}%/$web/$topic\">$n  <title>$topic</title>$n  <link>%SCRIPTURL{"view"}%/$web/$topic</link>$n  <description>$summary (last changed by <nop>$wikiname)</description>$n  <dc:date>$isodate</dc:date>$n  <dc:contributor>$n    <rdf:Description link=\"%SCRIPTURL{"view"}%?topic=$wikiusername\">$n      <rdf:value>$username</rdf:value>$n    </rdf:Description>$n  </dc:contributor>$n</item>"
}%
%STOPINCLUDE%

See also: WebAtomBase