AlphaWiki/Wiki/Subscribing to AlphaTcl Wiki RSS feeds

This page explains how to obtain RSS feeds about recently modified AlphaTcl wiki pages

Quick Start

If you want to get a feed in RSS 2.0 format about all recent changes to AlphaTcl wiki pages, click on this URI to open it in your default RSS reader:

[http://alphatcl.sourceforge.net/wiki/pmwiki.php/Site/AllRecentChanges?action=rss]

This alternate URI using a "purl" should also work:

[http://www.purl.org/net/Alpha/Wiki/Site/AllRecentChanges?action=rss]

The rest of this document explains how this default URI can be further modified.

What is 'RSS' ?

"Really Simple Syndication (RSS) is a lightweight XML format designed for sharing headlines and other content of news-like web sites, including major news sites like Wired, news-oriented community sites like Slashdot, and personal weblogs. But it's not just for news. Pretty much anything that can be broken down into discrete items can be syndicated via RSS: the "recent changes" page of a wiki, a changelog of CVS checkins, even the revision history of a book. Once information about each item is in RSS format, an RSS-aware program can check the feed for changes and react to the changes in an appropriate way.

"RSS-aware programs called news aggregators are popular in the weblogging community. Many weblogs make content available in RSS. A news aggregator can help you keep up with all your favorite weblogs by checking their RSS feeds and displaying new items from each of them."

(From [http://www.xml.com/pub/a/2002/12/18/dive-into-xml.html])

How the AlphaTcl Wiki RSS Feed works

The AlphaTcl wiki engine (pmWiki) is able to generate RSS feeds about the recently modified pages in various standard formats, including RSS 1.0, RSS 2.0 and Atom 1.0. The wiki engine builds feeds based on certain pages called Wiki Trails. The RecentChanges pages are examples of wiki trails.

All you have to do is pass the correct URI to your favorite news aggregator or news feeds reader (Safari 2.0 or greater for instance): to subscribe to a RecentChanges page on the AlphaTcl wiki, just supply the usual URI of this page immediately followed by an action instruction ?action=type.

For instance, if you wanted to get a feed in RSS 2.0 format about the recent changes which occured in the Main group, you would use a URI like this:

 
        http://alphatcl.sourceforge.net/wiki/pmwiki.php/Main/RecentChanges?action=rss

Different RSS Feed Types

The possible values for the "type" are shown in the following table:

Type	RSS Format
rss	RSS 2.0
rdf	RSS 1.0
atom	Atom 1.0

Examples (for "All Recent Changes") :

There is one RecentChanges page per group. Here are some examples (as of April 2006) :

/Development/RecentChanges

/FAQ/RecentChanges

/Features/RecentChanges

/Help/RecentChanges

/Main/RecentChanges

/Menus/RecentChanges

/Modes/RecentChanges

/Pipes/RecentChanges

Example hyperlinks (all using the "rss" feed type) :

Customizing the RSS Feed

The RSS feed URIs accept additional options which let you modify the output. The currently available options are:

?count=n: Limit feed to n items
?order=-time: Display most recently changed items first
?trail=page: Obtain items from trail on page
?group=group: Limit feed to pages in group
?link=page: Create feed from pages linked to page
?list=normal: Exclude things like RecentChanges, AllRecentChanges, etc.

For instance, to display the most recent change first you would use a URI like this:

 
 	http://alphatcl.sourceforge.net/wiki/pmwiki.php/Site/AllRecentChanges?action=rss&order=-time

By default, 10 feeds are generated. The ?count option lets you change this value. For instance:

 
 	http://alphatcl.sourceforge.net/wiki/pmwiki.php/Site/AllRecentChanges?action=rss&count=15