Re: [syndication] Re: ANN: RSS 'ping' interface at fyuze.com

["Bill Kearney" <wkearney99@hotmail.com>]

Better to accept the name parameter and just toss it.

Accept the HTML site URL and cross-reference that locally for it's feed.  This'd
be problematic for sites that consider their "main" URL to be that used on ALL
their feeds.

Alternatively, you can dig into the site HTML looking for the link element
containing the data URL and use that.  Of course some sites stuff multiple link
tags into the HTML so you've an adventure on your hands there too.

Perhaps it'd be worth allowing the submission of a data URL directly.  It'd be a
little harder to determine whether that's a URL pointing to a feed or to an HTML
page.  But if you're keeping a local DB/cache then this is no big deal.  Check
the pinged URL against your local DB and if it's a previously seen feed, well
there you are.  If it's unknown then you're going to have to download it and
take a closer look at it.

Yes, it would be good to see the weblogs.com API evolve into supporting a more
flexible range of requests.  But given the general recalicitrance seen in past
API evolution attempts, it may be high time to create an open and standard
structure instead.

-Bill Kearney

----- Original Message -----

> in theory, the weblogs.com api does provide the functionality that
> is needed. however, the weblogs.com api accepts the url of a site
> (http://somesite.com) whereas the API at fyuze accepts the RSS feed
> for a site (http://somesite.com/rss.xml). i wanted to minimize the
> confusion.
>
> also, the weblogs.com api accepts two parameters, one of which is
> the name of the site, which i don't need and have no use for. it
> would be a clunky fit, and if i ever need to expand the api in any
> way (though i don't how i would need to for the ping method) i'm
> free to do it without breaking an implementation of the weblogs.com
> api, or my api (since it uses a struct with named members, instead
> of ordered parameters).
>
> i'm really just trying to minimize the confusion, and make it clear
> that it does not mirror the functionality of weblogs.com. (ie. don't
> ping it with your website url, ping it with your RSS url)