RSS & XML

[Hans]

Hi,

RSS - which variable stands for "Really Simple Syndication" or "Rich Site Summary" - is a relative new way to distribute the contents of your site.

We probably can try to explain here what RSS is, how it works, what software you need etc etc, but we feel the following links are much better at this then we ever can be.
The only thing we can say about it, is we frankly recommend it when you want to stay up-to-date what happens on this Message Board!

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/help/3223484.stm
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=& ... define:RSS
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/connected/ma ... boot05.xml

Or in Dutch;
http://www.nu.nl/info.jsp?n=305013&c=155

Currently we are offering two means of subscribing to a RSS-feed.

The first is to the complete Message Board in one single feed; point your RSS program to http://www.scramble.nl/forum/rss.php

Note; currently the subscription per forum is not (yet) possible.
The second way is by specific forum. But for this you need the forum-ID; just go to the forum you want the RSS-feed from; in your address bar you will now see something like http://www.scramble.nl/forum/viewforum.php?f=14 (this being the Amsterdam-Schiphol forum). Here "14" is the forum-ID. Now put this forum-ID behind the RSS-link above in the same manner, for example http://www.scramble.nl/forum/rss.php?f=14 for the RSS feed of just the Amsterdam-Schiphol forum.


Hope this helps!,

Regards,

Hans

[Hans]

Although a lot of info can be found on above mentioned pages, we thought it might be convenient to show some examples of some RSS readers we have been testing with;

The first is RSS Reader, which has a popup functionallity when new messages arrive. It can be downloaded from http://www.rssreader.com;





The second might be another reason to leave your Outlook or Outlook Express behind you, as Mozilla Thunderbird has an RSS reader nicely integrated in its e-mail client; http://www.mozilla.org/products/thunderbird/;




The third, and last for now, is the personal favorite of our webmaster, an RSS reader as an screensaver;



Regards,

Hans

[Hans]

All,

This night the new version of the RSS feed was put in production. This new version has much more flexible possibilities for getting only those posting you are looking for - although you may need to set up multiple feeds to get all those postings you want.

As we will not be creating any graphical interface, or any other means for automatically creating the links for the feeds you want, some extra effort from your side is needed though.

With this new version, we are introducing two new variables to filter the content of the RSS-feed; the possibility to include only a specific (sub-) forum, and the possibility to filter on specific strings (like words, part of words, multiple words etc) in the subject of the threads in that forum.

But how do you link to those feeds?

All postings
For showing all postings, in all forums, just use the 'simple', old fashioned

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http://www.scramble.nl/forum/rss.php

Filtering
For our explanation and examples we will mostly be using the Brussels forum.

Before you will create your own feed, you need to know which ID (number) the forum has you want to use. You browse to that forum, and then look at the address bar in your browser. For the Brussels forum you will then see;

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http://www.scramble.nl/forum/viewforum.php?f=61

Here the number 61 at the end is the forum-ID, which you need to remember.

Only a specific forum
With this forum-ID we can now create a feed for this specific forum. First put a question mark behind http://www.scramble.nl/forum/rss.php" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;, followed by f= and the forum-ID. You now have something what looks like (and can be copied to your RSS reader)

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http://www.scramble.nl/forum/rss.php?f=61

Filter on a string
After you have set up a feed for a specific forum, you can now further filter on specific strings in the subjects in that forum. First put an ampersand ("&") behind the feed you created before, followed by s= and the string you would like to filter on.
For instance, you only want the civil postings in the Brussels forum, so those which include CIV in the subject.

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http://www.scramble.nl/forum/rss.php?f=61&s=CIV

Note that it is not possible to use only the string-search function without specifying a forum.

Some more examples
Only the military related postings in the Amsterdam-Schiphol forum

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http://www.scramble.nl/forum/rss.php?f=14&s=MIL

All postings about Red Flag in the Military News forum

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http://www.scramble.nl/forum/rss.php?f=48&s=Red Flag

Only the Leeuwarden related topics in the 'Scramble Intelligence Service' forum

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http://www.scramble.nl/forum/rss.php?f=32&s=EHLW

Postings in the Radio Activity forum which have the string 'freq' in the topics title - so including the words 'frequency', 'frequencies', 'freqs', but also 'frequently'

Code: Select all

http://www.scramble.nl/forum/rss.php?f=9&s=freq

Please note this will only work as expected as long as everybody follows the guidelines on topic titles


Hope this is of use.

Kind regards,

[RogierV]

Hans, thanks for your efforts you put in upgrading this useful feature!


Some browsers can use the RSS feed too, although they don't use RSS to its full extents. For example in Firefox you can add this to your bookmarks bar (Dutch: bladwijzerbalk). This will show you the latest message headers, posted in the specified forum (and filtered on strings).

Below I added a screenshot of how I use the RSS feed in Mozilla Firefox. As you can see I use Scramble feeds for all postings, for Rotterdam-Zestienhoven filtered on MIL and for the Aviation Photo Forum.

[Gerard]

Is there any chance to update the RSS-info mentioned here?

Unfortunately, since the website-update, there seems to be no working RSS-feed for the messageboard.

Thanks.

[nilsko]

hear hear! Anxiously waiting for this also.

[nilsko]

Any news or developments on this?

[SpotterRuben]

Any more info on this?

[Key]

Unfortunately, I would be surprised if we ever get this feature back. The forum now operates under the third Scramble website since Hans posted the original info and nowadays hardly anything works like things did back then. Over the past year it has also proven to be very hard to implement any kind of change to this specific website. Never say never but don't get your hopes too high.

Erik

[Hans]

Erik,

The original RSS feed I created back then, was independent of the server it was hosted on, or whatever framework you use. Simply said, as long as the script was on the same server, with access to the database, it worked. (although that might have been replaced when we moved from phpBB2 to phpBB3). And basically the same script was also used for the "Now on our Messageboard" part on the homepage - but I think that was replaced after I left by a phpBB extension??

And .... phpBB nowadays has an official sanctioned RSS extension, which should not be that hard to install, as apparently this has been done before - and it definitely should be easier then getting your own Scramble looks, instead of this ugly default phpBB template (which I sincerely hope is also on the to-do list )

Regards, Hans

[Key]

Hans, many thanks for chipping in. However, as it has become obvious over the past two years or so that any change to Scramble takes a big effort to realise (including a cost aspects) I for one will not be 'pushing' this feature to be implemented until several more urgent matters have been solved. Should we ever do get to RSS, I am sure your input will be used. Far ahead of that, it's highly appreciated.

Erik