feed

I just created a feed of recently updated drupal modules using RSSxl Beta could do it. I entered:

• Page URL: http://drupal.org/project/Modules/date
• Start String: leave blank
• Start Item String: <h2>
• End Item String: </div>
• Start Description String: <p>
• End Description String: </p>
• Link Number: 1

Unfortunately, according to this forum post, "RSSxl only uses the first 20KB of the target page - we have to do that to keep bandwidth usage down to reasonable proportions." And because drupal seems to alphabetize the modules that got updated in any given day, if the number of module updates that fit into 20kB is more than the number that were updated on a certain day, then some module updates might not get into this feed.

Actually it might not be exactly alphabetical...it looks like it is aphabetical in batches. Must be due to a cron job running infrequently and the batch it generates on each run is alphabetical either intentionally or unintentionally due to the fact that directories and the like are sorted alphabetically by default.

I found a really neat site that can generate custom feeds. I really wanted a way to not only get a feed of the most popular articles today on digg, but also have links directly to the dugg article, not to the digg page (sorry digg).

This site called RSSxl Beta could do it. I entered:

• Page URL: http://www.digg.com/view/all/popular/today
• Start String: <div class="news-body">
• Start Item String: <h3 id="title.*?">
• End Item String: <div class="news-details">
• Start Description String: <p>
• End Description String: </p>
• Link Number: 1

That will give you a nice feed of the most recent 9 items on visible at http://www.digg.com/view/all/popular/today. The only downside is that it only displays 9. I am thinking I might write my own script to do this in python using a similar method to that done by RSSxl Beta.

Update: Just modified the "start item string" a bit. Didn't realize you could use regex.