Blog: Upper-to-Dater; How to RSS for Updates; Looking to RSS Categories

DMS General
#1

Had some time to myself over the recent Holiday, so I threw together the blog entries which summarize the Show & Tell threads from September, October, and November.
In the past, I’ve tried to ensure every photo of acceptable quality appears on the Blog summary. I am planning less of that for future entries. I want to make it more of a digest, and let interested parties browse over to Talk, where we already have the blow-by-blow. If you love that, let me know. If you hate that, retaliate by making your own blog posts. Anyone can do it. Or give me constructive criticisms in a friendly, nice manner, and I’ll try to listen. Sometimes I’m hard-headed, though.

If you love the blog, and want to keep up with it, you can subscribe to the RSS feed here. As far as I can tell, any blog posting will hit that feed. For the last couple years, it’s really only been the Show & Tell summaries. Feel free to address that shortfall. Anyone can do it.

I am hoping to find a way to make the “categories” on the blog RSS feedable. I’m regrettably, woefully inadequate at this. I’ve been corresponding with @denzuko on it, who is certainly capable, but likely very overwhelmed. If you have thoughts, tips, comments, or suggestions on how one could best enable a subscriber to choose, say posts categorized as “Newsletter” or “Upcoming Events”, or “Member Show & Tell” for their RSS feed, let me know.

Thank you for your interest.

3 Likes
Main DMS Website - Update
#2

To partially address my own questions on the RSS feed of categories, I think this address it, but don’t know if it’s applicable in our environment


If so, it SOUNDS as simple as editing a template to include the RSS feed for the category to the category page… No idea how to do that at all, let alone in our instance…

#3

try using this subscribe to the RSS feed link instead, it has a nice user interface instead of the ugly wall of code.

FYI: adding https://feedly.com/i/welcome/feed/ in front of any rss feed url works like this.

Oh and while I think php should go the way of cobol, as for the rss feed of categories:

/// categories.php
<?php

$SITE_URI="https://dallasmakerspace.org/"

function fetch(string $url, integer $timeout) {
    $ch = curl_init();  // Initialize our handler for libcurl

    // Timeout to user defined time or 5 second, closing the connection 
    // after transfer and preform a GET "url" where url is provided by the user
    curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_GET, TRUE);
    curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, $url);
    curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_CONNECTTIMEOUT, $timeout || 5);
    curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, 1);

    $results = curl_exec($ch);    // Get URL content

    curl_close($ch);              // Close handle to release resources

    return $lines_string;
}

// Returns an array of feeds
function CategoriesFromFeed() {
   $res = fetch($SITE_URI+"feed")
   return SimpleXMLElement::xpath("//category/text()")
}

// Return an unordered list of links to feeds with the feedly ui
?>
<ul><?php foreach (categoriesfromFeed() as $category) { ?>
  <li><a href="https://feedly.com/i/welcome/feed/<? echo urlencode ("https://dallasmakerspace.org/category/$category/feed/")?>>Subscribe to Category - <?php echo $category ?></a></li><?php } ?>
</ul>

That code should allow one to dump all the categories from our main feed then subscribe to them via a link.

1 Like
#4

But with the ugly wall of code, I can simply click subscribe (on my reader) and boom, I’m in.
To use this, I would have to have a feedly account (or connect it to one of the litany of alternate authenticators, most of which I prefer not to have accounts for, either).

Cool code.
No idea if it’ll plug in on the blog site… :+1:

2 Likes
#5

December added.
https://dallasmakerspace.org/2018/01/december-2017-member-show-and-tell/

2 Likes
#6

January added.
https://dallasmakerspace.org/2018/02/january-2018-member-show-and-tell/

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#7

Adding to the growing list of RSS Supported feeds we have at Dallas makerspace. Talk also has: https://talk.dallasmakerspace.org/latest.rss for latest posts. and each category has their own:

Expect to see VCC build a magazine on Google Newstand very soon

#8

Updated the blog again, with Q2 2019.
Thank you to each contributor (to the Show & Tell threads I pillage for content, because I’m imaginative like that)!

#9

And now with Q3 2019.
https://dallasmakerspace.org/2019/10/highlights-of-member-show-and-tell-q3-2019/
And don’t miss the Red Bull Soapbox Racers post! https://dallasmakerspace.org/2019/09/dallas-makerspace-members-participate-in-red-bull-soapbox-race-2019-dfw/