When playing with Timeline, I thaught it could be a nice interface for RSS feeds, especially for weblogs or planets.
So, I wrote an ”RSS to Timeline” service, that takes any RSS/Atom feed as an input, and translates it into the correct JSON / Timeline format. Just put the correct URL as a data source for your Timeline, and you’ll get it !
Eg:
As you can see, I’ve also setup a demo service where you can see your feed in action. Everything is described in details here.
Regarding the implementation, the script is written in Python, using feedparser and mod_python. I first started in PHP with MagpieRSS, but it doesn’t provide universal methods to access feed/items informations, so the way to access content depends on the feed format. Yet, with feedparser, methods and properties are the same whatever your feed: is RSS 0.9, RSS 1.0, Atom … which is really interesting for writing universal agregators / translators.
It was also the first time I used mod_python, and I must say the Publisher handler is also very easy to use, with a templating system and interaction between the interface and the script.
