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The Indefinite Article.

Monday, December 19, 2005

Bloggalysis part deux

So, upon reading Amber's post about Bloggalysis, an affliction we have all suffered from, I was struck with an idea: Why not service my bloglines addiction by doing what Blogger has so far refused to do: set up an RSS feed for the comments!

But how, pray tell? Well, it turns out that you can configure Blogger to send out an email alert when a comment is posted to the blog. I examined the format of this email and figured that it would be possible to strip out the good stuff, cram it into data-structure and make a feed out of it.

With a little bit of Ruby magic (about 90 lines), I managed to get the job done! I pointed an email address at a ruby script that parses the email, crams the data into an embedded database, and then writes out the most recent comments as RSS feed...

I present The Chunky and Conglomerated Chairjockey Comment Feed!

If you use Safari's RSS reader, here is your link..

If you use some other reader (like the aforementioned bloglines) just point your tool to http://odacrem.com/rss/chairjockey-comments.rdf

Enjoy the RSESSY goodness!!!

posted by pablo at 8:50 PM

6 Comments:

  • how long will this take to update on the RSS feed, i wonder?

    By Blogger Killy, at 9:53 PM  

  • Damn I need to get on the rails bandwagon. Paul, did you read this about rails and asterisk?

    By Blogger Adolph, at 10:45 PM  

  • You do need to get on the rails bandwagon...rails is ideal for the kind of projects that you do with the MS Society. I mean, you could bust out a sweet revamp of the EDMS in no time-reducing the code-base complexity and size, and adding some sweet interfacy goodness....

    By Blogger pablo, at 1:11 AM  

  • Pablo, you are amazing!!! not only can you do wonderful computer tricks, you also speak a language that I only have the dimmest understanding of. Still, I think I can manage to click on a link if it's really that simple... Thank you, wizard of blog!

    By Blogger Amber Freda's, at 7:13 AM  

  • whu?

    i currently get an email from my carolinadivina blog
    but not from this one
    so
    what you're saying is i can get emails from this one?
    and would i get emails for every comment posted
    or can this be finetuned so that i only get emails for comments posted on my posts?

    By Blogger CarolinaDivina, at 5:02 PM  

  • what's RSS feead?

    By Blogger CarolinaDivina, at 5:03 PM  

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