Syndic8 XML-RPC
Recently I've been working on integrating search functionality into nntp//rss. Syndic8.com offers up an XML-RPC API, and I thought that this would be a great way to integrate the search functionality. Feedster are also just about to release an XML-RPC API, and this too will be integrated into nntp//rss.
I'm using the syndic8.FindFeeds and syndic8.GetFeedInfo operations. FindFeeds allows you to initiate a search by supplying a search term. It returns a list of matching Feed Ids as its response. GetFeedInfo is used to retrieve the feed information, taking a list of Feed Ids as its input. It also allows you to narrow down the set of returned feed attributes, which enables optimization of the amount of data returned from Syndic8 to the XML-RPC client. Unfortunately the documentation did not seem to provide a list of the specific field names that could be specified, so, to help other people working with the API, I've listed below all the fields returned by GetFeedInfo.
My only current issue with the API is the fact that the FindFeeds function performs an unbounded search - I can't seem limit it to a maximum number of results. If someone, for example, searches using the term 'RSS', they'll get a list of over 15000 feed Ids. I'd like to be able to say 'give me the first 200 matches', which will not only result in a more compact response from Syndic8, but should also place less stress on their servers.
Field list
archivable
Categories
creator
cur_polling_interval
dataurl
date_approved
date_created
date_good_parse
date_xml_changed
description
editor
faultCode
faultString
feedid
fetchable
Geo-IP
headlines_per_day
headlines_rank
imageurl
lang_code
last_etag
last_poll_time
last_pollid
license_id
Locations
meta_scraped
origin
poll_status
publisher
ref_feedid
rss_version
s8_owner_userid
scraped
sitename
siteurl
status
toolkit
toolkit_version
views
webmaster
Great article, thanks.
As a note of clarification, the syndic8.GetFeedFields call will also return the complete list of fields.