RSS for Debian

[Nic Ferrier]

I'm not sure if this is the right place to send this enquiry,
apologies if I've got it wrong.


A while ago I read in Debian Weekly News that people were talking
about an RSS feed for Debian.

I just spent some time trying to create an RSS feed by parsing the
Debian home page. Unfortunately, the news-y lists that you have there
(the News section and the Security Advisories section) aren't
formatted in a particularly helpfull way for parsing. I could probably
build a system but it would be clumsy and unreliable.


I could easily construct a good news system by parsing the home page
if you formatted the news lists a little differently, say with span
tags surrounding each news item or with each news item part of a UL
list with the list bullet set to nothing.


Alternately I could help you come up with better ways of managing and
publishing this information in many formats (and keeping it
translated).

Let me know if you're interested in any of this.



About me:
I am a free software developer who uses Debian heavily. The link to my
site is below. I'm quite heavily involved in the GNU project and I've
recently automated the multi-language news system for the GNU project
while adding RSS feeds. I do a *lot* of work with XML and web
architecture.

[Peter Karlsson]

Post by Nic Ferrier
I could easily construct a good news system by parsing the home page
if you formatted the news lists a little differently, say with span
tags surrounding each news item or with each news item part of a UL
list with the list bullet set to nothing.

You shouldn't be parsing the generated HTML anyway, the script should
be integrated with the website build process and use the source code.
Have a look at http://www.debian.org/devel/website/ for how you can
access the source code and build data from it.

We already generate RSS feeds from the security advisories, the source
code for doing this is available along the rest.

[Nic Ferrier]

Post by Peter Karlsson

Post by Nic Ferrier
I could easily construct a good news system by parsing the home page
if you formatted the news lists a little differently, say with span
tags surrounding each news item or with each news item part of a UL
list with the list bullet set to nothing.

You shouldn't be parsing the generated HTML anyway, the script should
be integrated with the website build process and use the source code.
Have a look at http://www.debian.org/devel/website/ for how you can
access the source code and build data from it.
We already generate RSS feeds from the security advisories, the source
code for doing this is available along the rest.

I wasn't aware of that because it isn't linked from the home page.

You don't need my help then.

[Bas Zoetekouw]

Hi Peter!

Post by Peter Karlsson

Post by Nic Ferrier
I could easily construct a good news system by parsing the home page
if you formatted the news lists a little differently, say with span
tags surrounding each news item or with each news item part of a UL
list with the list bullet set to nothing.

You shouldn't be parsing the generated HTML anyway, the script should
be integrated with the website build process and use the source code.
Have a look at http://www.debian.org/devel/website/ for how you can
access the source code and build data from it.

The code is already in there. See
http://cvs.debian.org/webwml/english/template/debian/recent_list.wml?cvsroot=webwml

The code for the rss feeds is a bit messy though; I've got a patch
pending that should fix that.
--
Kind regards,
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