Archive of UserLand's first discussion group, started October 5, 1998.

Re: Creating an Aggregator without XML-RPC

Author:Jim Goodman
Posted:10/11/1999; 12:17:28 PM
Topic:Creating an Aggregator without XML-RPC
Msg #:11938 (In response to 11931)
Prev/Next:11937 / 11939

sure... i use newsclipper and it's modules to incorporate information into my site (an example can be found at digital alternative (MP# is current;y broken cause they changed theri site, i'm fixing it...). this page has a several handlers written, each grabbing information from a particular site (i paid $25 for each handler to be written). i then wrote a simple perl script that executes this particular newsclipper handler that is triggered by Ms scheduled tasks. this perl script executes newsclipper, then uploads the created page to my web server (virtual hosting at an ISP).

unfortunately, netreaper doesn't work exactly the same way. i use it to gather information from sites, and then i have to cut and paste them to create a page. either that or use SSI, which my ISP doesn't support.

for morons like myself, the most important thing is getting the info. do we really have to know the questions and the answers, or is it good enough to just know the answers. for example, why can't a page be created that asks all the right questions (what page to grab info from, where is the start and end of that info on the page, in each chunk - do you want it split and assigned to vairables, if so what, what is the template that it should use for output, etc.) and then generate the querry. and waht would be even greater is if it could ask if you want to database it, and then also give you options for output and sorting of the data when outputting etc.

i love the power of frontier and the scripting users. if there was an easier interface built for doing the difficult things (for us morons) i think that many of us would gladly spend the $900 for a full license. HTML has been wysiwyg for a long time, why isn't this? :)

should you need further info, i can post the template and handler so that you can see how they work.

There are responses to this message:

This page was archived on 6/13/2001; 4:53:01 PM.

© Copyright 1998-2001 UserLand Software, Inc.