Changes: Help:RSS

Revision as of 19:51, 2 March 2021

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The RSS extension allows you to embed RSS feeds from any site onto a page. This could be used to display news feeds with timely information on your subject, to show entries from a related blog, or to show recent changes from another wiki.

Fandom wikis now support the RSSPie extension, described on https://help.gamepedia.com/Extension:RSSPie.

How do I add the RSS feed to a wiki page?

Locate the URL for a feed you would like to include, usually by clicking an "RSS" button or link on the page providing the feed. Copy the URL from the address bar.

The basic code to add an RSS feed to a page is:

<rss>URL goes here</rss>

How can I customize the feed?

There are a number of parameters you can add within the <rss> tag to customize the display output:

Parameters in the RSS tag
Attribute	Description
`itemTemplate="PageName"`	Default: Mediawiki:Rss_item_template Item template is used to define the display template for individual items in a feed. It requires a complete page name including namespace if needed.
`max="X"`	Default: 5 Show only X number of items from a feed.
`sort="newest"`	Sort direction for feed items. Sorts newest first by default and can be set to oldest.
`descriptionLength="200"`	Default: 200 Truncates long descriptions automatically to the specified character length.
`dateFormat="Y/m/d H:i"`	Default: Y/m/d H:i Formats the date using PHP formatting guidelines. Please see the PHP date documentation for formatting information.
`filterIn="example,words"`	Default: (None) Comma delimited list of search words to filter into the display. If the item in the feed contains any of the word(s) the item will be shown.
`filterOut="example,words"`	Default: (None) Comma delimited list of search words to filter out of the display. If the item in the feed contains any of the word(s) the item will be hidden. Any feed items that get caught by filterOut will hide regardless if they get caught by the filterIn parameter.

Example

To add some World Cup headlines directly from FIFA, you might use:

<rss max=3>https://www.fifa.com/worldcup/rss/news</rss>

As a result, you'd get:

Keep up with the Cup:

Google feeds

Clearly, one of the biggest news aggregators on the web is Google. Many wikis use Google feeds of one kind or another. Unfortunately, Google has made several changes to their news services over the years, and some wikis may be displaying broken feeds as a result.

The easiest thing to do is to copy and paste the following to your wiki, and change MyTopicHere — both times — to whatever you need it to be:

<rss max=2> https://news.google.com/rss/search?pz=1&cf=all&q=MyTopicHere&cf=all&scoring=n&hl=en-US&gl=US&ceid=US:en</rss>

For instance, let's say I wanted to get a newsfeed about Star Wars at Disneyland. I'd use this:


<rss max=2>https://news.google.com/rss/search?pz=1&cf=all&q=DisneylandStarWars&cf=all&scoring=n&hl=en-US&gl=US&ceid=US:en</rss>

After a little styling, the result would be:

The latest from Galaxy's Edge:

Create Your Own Headbands Arriving at Disneyland Resort - Disneyland News - - 2024/04/18 16:04

Create Your Own Headbands Arriving at Disneyland Resort Disneyland News...

R-Rated Disneyland: Guests Disgusted by Theme Park Performance - Inside the Magic - Inside the Magic - - 2024/04/18 01:59

R-Rated Disneyland: Guests Disgusted by Theme Park Performance - Inside the Magic Inside the Magic...

Google feeds in other languages

This same base code is adaptable to other languages, using Google's language codes. Often, but not always, those language codes are the same as Fandom's language codes.

For instance, we'd make the feed French by altering the last bit of the URL to include references to FR (the country) and fr (the language) — like this &hl=fr&gl=FR&ceid=FR:fr.

French feed for the keywords "DisneylandStarWars"

REVIEW: We Ate EVERYTHING at Disneyland's Star Wars Nite - AllEars.Net - - 2024/04/17 19:57

REVIEW: We Ate EVERYTHING at Disneyland's Star Wars Nite AllEars.Net...

Free-roaming BD-X droids return to Disneyland's Star Wars land - blooloop - - 2024/04/08 07:00

Free-roaming BD-X droids return to Disneyland's Star Wars land blooloop...

But there are some important caveats to working with other languages.

Language determines context. Choosing French in our example emphasizes Disneyland Paris over the original Disneyland in California.
Topics aren't universal. Feed topics don't produce results in all languages. You may have to massage the RSS statement a bit to get a feed in the language of your choice. If one set of keywords isn't producing results, think of other, similar words and try them. But remember: your feed topic simply might not be popular in a given language. You may never be able to get an iCarly feed in Sudanese!
Mixed language content possible. Feeds might produce results that are a mix of different languages, particularly if your topic is in a language different than the ?hl= variable.
Different users may see different things. What you see on a Google newsfeed can be shaped by your browser, the country you're in, and the language settings on your own Google account. So it's possible that two people looking at the same Google newsfeed will see different results.

Making sure the feed meets your needs

News feeds are passive. That is, you have to accept whatever results arrive. If your topic is clear and distinct, this is usually unproblematic But if your topic is comprised of very common nouns, you might get some results that have nothing to do with your topic.

Make sure you monitor the results for a while to see that every single line item is actually relevant.

Consider adding identifiers — like the production company, exact title, or key creative person — to the search term in order to ensure better results. For instance, "Good Omens Amazon" will return more results relevant to the Amazon version of Good Omens than just "Good Omens" alone. You may have to play around a bit to find the optimal term.

You also want to make sure you look at the dates on the news stories. If you're not pulling recent news stories, your search term probably needs a tweak. A feed that's not able to produce recent hits shouldn't be used. It helps no one to know what 2008's big news stories were about your topic.

Can I embed feeds from my own wiki?

Yes, MediaWiki provides feeds in both RSS and Atom formats for all history pages and many special pages, including Special:RecentChanges, Special:NewPages, and Special:WantedPages.

You can use the RSS URL, in combination with this extension, to display portions of these lists on other pages on your community. See Help:Feeds for more information

Further help and feedback

Browse and search other help pages at Help:Contents
Check Fandom Community Central for sources of further help and support
Check Contacting Fandom for how to report any errors or unclear steps in this article

@@ Line 6: / Line 6: @@
 Fandom wikis now support the RSSPie extension, described on https://help.gamepedia.com/Extension:RSSPie.
 ==How do I add the RSS feed to a wiki page?==
@@ Line 13: / Line 14: @@
 <div style="margin-left:50px">'''<code><nowiki><rss>URL goes here</rss></nowiki></code>'''</div>
 ==How can I customize the feed?==
@@ Line 50: / Line 52: @@
 Comma delimited list of search words to filter out of the display.  If the item in the feed contains any of the word(s) the item will be hidden.  Any feed items that get caught by filterOut will hide regardless if they get caught by the filterIn parameter.
 |}
 ===Example===
@@ Line 56: / Line 59: @@
 <div style="margin-left:50px"><code>'''<nowiki><rss max=3>https://www.fifa.com/worldcup/rss/news</rss></nowiki>'''</code></div>
-After adding in a title and some styling, you'd get:
+As a result, you'd get:
 <div style="width:80%; border:1px solid #555; margin:auto; padding:5px">
@@ Line 62: / Line 65: @@
 <rss max=3>https://www.fifa.com/worldcup/rss/news</rss></div>
 == Google feeds ==
@@ Line 100: / Line 104: @@
 * '''Mixed language content possible.''' Feeds might produce results that are a mix of different languages, particularly if your topic is in a language different than the <code>?hl=</code> variable.
 * '''Different users may see different things.''' What you see on a Google newsfeed can be shaped by your browser, the country you're in, and the language settings on your own Google account. So it's possible that two people looking at the same Google newsfeed will see different results.
 === Making sure the feed meets your needs ===
 News feeds are passive. That is, you have to accept whatever results arrive. If your topic is clear and distinct, this is usually unproblematic But if your topic is comprised of very common nouns, you might get some results that have nothing to do with your topic.
@@ Line 108: / Line 113: @@
 You also want to make sure you look at the dates on the news stories. If you're not pulling recent news stories, your search term probably needs a tweak. A feed that's not able to produce recent hits shouldn't be used. It helps no one to know what 2008's big news stories were about your topic.
 ==Can I embed feeds from my own wiki?==
 Yes, MediaWiki provides feeds in both RSS and Atom formats for all [[Help:Page history|history pages]] and many [[Help:Special pages|special pages]], including [[Special:RecentChanges]], [[Special:NewPages]], and [[Special:WantedPages]].
-You can use the RSS URL, in combination with this extension, to display portions of these lists on other pages on your community. See [[Help:Feeds]] for more information.
+You can use the RSS URL, in combination with this extension, to display portions of these lists on other pages on your community. See [[Help:Feeds]] for more information
 ==Further help and feedback==
 {{Help and feedback section}}