Tinderbox's HTML Export can export all sorts of formats, including Atom and RSS feeds. Indeed, this TBX exports valid Atom and RSS 2.0 feeds. Ideally you should read the format docs for your desired formats as you may wish/need to tweak the templates used by aTbRef to support better you own data needs. The primary references are:
- Atom format: http://www.atomenabled.org/developers/protocol/atom-protocol-spec.php
- RSS format: http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/rss/rss.html
- Feed validator (for both formats): http://validator.w3.org/feed/
The format specs can be intimidating for the ordinary person, but hopefully the example templates used by aTbRef should meet most everyday needs.
In each case the process uses an agent to gather the notes to be referenced in the feed and then exports using an envelope (agent) & letter (agent's child aliases) technique.
Notes for re-using aTbrefs' method & templates:
- The feed-generating agent goes at the end of the outline. This is deliberate, so as to ensure all other agents have updated in the last cycle so the query results are as up-to-date as possible. This becomes more important in a document like aTbRefs where there may be agents querying other agents, etc.
- aTbRef's feed simply looks for
descendedFrom("A Tinderbox Reference File")&($Modified=="today").- The first query term ensures non-content notes are ignored (this is also why all the content in descended from a single Root-level note - it makes it easier to keep back-of-house stuff separate in TBXs where you intend to export the data.
- The second term looks for items changed today. As creating a note sets both $Created and $Modified, the query finds both new and updated notes. Be aware that $Modified only reflects changes to $Text (possibly $Name also). If this is insufficient for your needs, alter the existing query as required.
- The feed agent should be set to use the 'news_atom' or 'news-rss' template according to the type of feed being generated. You will find the templates needed in the /TEMPLATES/ container of the aTbREf TBX document. Each of these templates is set to call a child template for per-item content (newsitem_atom, newsitem_rss).
- All text in orange in the aTbRef versions of the template will need to be reviewed and updated as necessary for use elsewhere, e.g. the feed author/title/source URL/etc.
