Headlines Plugin

Description

This plugin displays RSS and ATOM feeds from news sites. Use it to build news portals that show headline news.

Note: Syndic8.com ( http://www.syndic8.com/ ) lists many RSS and ATOM feeds.

Syntax Rules

%HEADLINES{"..."}%

The header and format parameters might also use variables rendering the dc, image and content namespace information. Note, that only bits of interest have been implemented so far and those namespaces might not be implemented fully yet.

Rendering the dc namespace

The following variables are extracting the dc namespace info, that could be used in header and format. Note that some of the variables are already used above. This is done by purpose to use different feeds with the same formatting parameters. If there's a conflict the non-dc tags have higher precedence, i.e. a <title> content </title> is preferred over <dc:title> content </dc:title>.

• $title: channel/article title (dc:title)
• $creator: channel creator (dc:creator)
• $subject: subject text; this will also add an image according to the subject hash list, see above (dc:subject)
• $description: ... (dc:description)
• $publisher: the channel/article publisher (dc:publisher)
• $contributor: ... (dc:contributor)
• $date: ... (dc:date)
• $type: ... (dc:type)
• $format: ... (dc:format)
• $identifier: ... (dc:identifier)
• $source: ... (dc:source)
• $language: ... (dc:language)
• $relation: ... (dc:relation)
• $coverage: ... (dc: coverage)
• $rights: ... (dc: rights)

Rendering the image namespace

An image:item is converted into an <img> tag using the following mappings:

• src: image url (rdf:about attribute of the image.item tag)
• alt: image title (title)
• width: image width (image:width)
• height: image height image:height)

Rendering the content namespace

The variable $content is referring to the <content:encoding> content </content:encoding>.

Examples

Slashdot News

Write

%HEADLINES{ "http://slashdot.org/slashdot.rdf" 
  header="*[[$link][$title]]:* $description" 
  format="$t* [[$link][$title]]"
  limit="4"
}%

HeadlinesPlugin ERROR: 501 Protocol scheme 'https' is not supported (IO::Socket::SSL not installed)

Business Opportunities Weblog

Write

%HEADLINES{ "http://www.business-opportunities.biz/feed" limit="2" }%

to get the latest postings on the "Business Opportunities" weblog:

HeadlinesPlugin ERROR: 500 Can't locate object method "new" via package "LWP::Protocol::https::Socket"

Plugin Settings

Plugin settings are stored as preferences settings. Do not change the settings here, they are here only for illustration purposes showing the default values. Define the settings in Main.TWikiPreferences. For example, to customize the HEADLINESPLUGIN_USERAGENTNAME setting, add a * Set HEADLINESPLUGIN_USERAGENTNAME = ... bullet in Main.TWikiPreferences.

• Refresh rate in minutes for cached feeds. Set to 0 to disable caching:
  • Set HEADLINESPLUGIN_REFRESH = 60

• Maximum number of items shown:
  • Set HEADLINESPLUGIN_LIMIT = 100

• Use LWP::UserAgent if set to 1, or fallback to TWiki's internal getUrl() method if set to 0:
  • Set HEADLINESPLUGIN_USELWPUSERAGENT = 1

• Timeout fetching a feed using the LWP::UserAgent:
  • Set HEADLINESPLUGIN_USERAGENTTIMEOUT = 20

• Name of user agent:
  • Set HEADLINESPLUGIN_USERAGENTNAME = TWikiHeadlinesPlugin/2011-07-08

• Default header: (variables are explained in the syntax rules)

      * Set HEADLINESPLUGIN_HEADER = <div class="headlinesChannel"><div class="headlinesLogo"><img src="$imageurl" alt="$imagetitle" border="0" />%BR%</div><div class="headlinesTitle">$n---+!! <a href="$link">$title</a></div><div class="headlinesDate">$date</div><div class="headlinesDescription">$description</div><div class="headlinesRight">$rights</div></div>

• Default format of one item: (variables are explained in the syntax rules)

      * Set HEADLINESPLUGIN_FORMAT = <div class="headlinesArticle"><div class="headlinesTitle"><a href="$link">$title</a></div>$n<span class="headlinesDate">$date</span> <span class="headlinesCreator"> $creator</span> <span class="headlinesSubject"> $subject </span>$n<div class="headlinesText"> $description</div></div>

• Values taken from configure: (only supported if CPAN:LWP is installed)
  • $TWiki::cfg{PROXY}{HOST} - proxy host, such as "proxy.example.com";
  • $TWiki::cfg{PROXY}{PORT} - proxy port, such as "8080";
  • $TWiki::cfg{PROXY}{SkipProxyForDomains} - domains excluded from proxy, such as "intra.example.com, bugs.example.com";

Style Sheets

The default HEADER and FORMAT settings use the following styles. See the style.css file defining the default CSS properties (indentation illustrates enclosure).

• headlinesRss: output of the HeadlinesPlugin (div)
  • headlinesChannel: channel header (div)
    • headlinesLogo: channel logo (div)
    • headlinesTitle: channel title (div)
    • headlinesDate: channel date (div)
    • headlinesDescription: channel description (div)
    • headlinesRight: channel copyright (div)
  • headlinesArticle: one news item (div)
    • headlinesTitle: article title (div)
    • headlinesDate: article date (span)
    • headlinesCreator: author of article (span)
    • headlinesSubject: subect category of the article (span)
    • headlinesText: article text (div)

Plugin Installation Instructions

Note: You do not need to install anything on the browser to use this plugin. The following instructions are for the administrator who installs the plugin on the TWiki server.

• For an automated installation, run the configure script and follow "Find More Extensions" in the in the Extensions section.

• Or, follow these manual installation steps:
  • Download the ZIP file from the Plugins home (see below).
  • Unzip HeadlinesPlugin.zip in your twiki installation directory. Content:

    File:	Description:
    data/TWiki/HeadlinesPlugin.txt	Plugin topic
    pub/TWiki/HeadlinesPlugin/style.css	Default CSS
    lib/TWiki/Plugins/HeadlinesPlugin.pm	Plugin Perl module
    lib/TWiki/HeadlinesPlugin/Core.pm	Plugin core

  • Set the ownership of the extracted directories and files to the webserver user.
  • Make sure the dependencies listed in the table below are resolved.

    Name	Version	Description
    Digest::MD5	>=2.33	Required. Download from CPAN:Digest::MD5
    LWP::UserAgent	>=5.803	Optional. Download from CPAN:LWP::UserAgent

• Plugin configuration and testing:
  • Run the configure script, enable the plugin in the Plugins section
  • Configure the plugin: See plugin settings above.
  • Test if the installation was successful: See example above.

Plugin Info

• One line description, shown in the TextFormattingRules topic:
  • Set SHORTDESCRIPTION = Show headline news in TWiki pages based on RSS and ATOM news feeds from external sites

Related Topics: VarHEADLINES, TWikiPlugins, AdminDocumentationCategory, TWikiPreferences