I recently realised that the Steemit Condenser app doesn't support RSS feeds. I mean, you cannot access any of our content feeds in RSS format for integration with other news aggregators such as Flipboard or Paper.li or the popular Zapier and IFTTT. RSS is an old technology but still in use today by many services so I thought it would be worth spending some time implementing one for Steemit.
My first thought was to use the existing code and just override the output to RSS instead of HTML but it was a bigger challenge than I thought. But thanks to @netuoso for pointing me to the right direction by mentioning the existence of a JSON API: by adding .json to the end of a Steemit URL, you can access the JSON format of the page you are on, for example my profile URL is https://steemit.com/@quochuy so simply add .json to access the JSON object, like this https://steemit.com/@quochuy.json
Using the same principal, I implemented a set of scripts that allows you to access RSS feed of various URLs by just adding .rss to them.
Here is an example of my blog posts as an RSS feed:
Current support
I've currently added support for RSS feeds to the following pages:
- user blog posts:
https://steemit.com/@<username>.rss - user's comments:
https://steemit.com/@<username>/comments.rss - user's replies:
https://steemit.com/@<username>/replies.rss - new blog posts created on the platform:
https://steemit.com/created.rss - trending blog posts created on the platform:
https://steemit.com/trending.rss - hot blog posts created on the platform:
https://steemit.com/hot.rss - blog posts in the specified category:
https://steemit.com/<category>.rss
Example of potential use
Flipboard magazine
I use Flipboard to read news articles about various topics when commuting. It allows you to create your own magazine by selecting topics or adding RSS feed as content source. I've done a test with Steemit RSS feed and it works like a charm.
Here I'm adding the RSS feed as source content in Flipboard iOS.
After the RSS added and loaded, a new magazine appears and I can start browsing it.
Tapping on one of the content will open the article on Steemit inside an internal browser.
On iPad it looks even better with nice easy-to-read fonts. Opening an article also renders the article without Steemit interface in a PDF like article and you still have the ability to open the original URL.
Paper.li newspaper
Paper.li is similar to Flipboard that can be viewed in a browser. The same RSS feed works in Paper.li just as easily as it worked in Flipboard
Other ideas of usage
- connect to Zapier or IFTTT to send an email when your favourite author posts a new content
- add the feed to a RSS feed reader browser extension so you always get a feed of latest content in your favourite category
- connect the RSS feed to your personal website to automatically integrate your Steem blog.
- many more...
Plan for the future
I'm planning to implement an RSS feed for user's transfers. Imagine you could connect your transfers feed to Zapier which then can pass the data to a webhook on your online store that then can verify the MEMO and validate an order. That could be an easy way to use STEEM as payment method.
Steemit Condenser Pull Request
This feature is not out yet, a pull request has been created for inclusion in the new Communities beta: https://github.com/steemit/condenser/pull/3659. Once approved and merged, it will be available when Communities will be released to the public
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RSS feed very nice this sounds interesting for this place.. :)
I’ll raise it as a separate issue as this change will affect anything apps that uses the old url format.
Posted using Partiko iOS
This seems like a great addition to the platform.
Would it be possible to get a user's blog posts within a particular category, for example so I could have an RSS feed of just my "gaming" content without also including my "actifit" posts?
Thanks for the suggestion.
I’ll see what the APIs offers in terms of filtering options.
Posted using Partiko iOS
Great stuff, @quichuy! Wishing you all the best for 2020!
Thanks.
Best wish for the new year!
Posted using Partiko iOS
The RSS feeds are an incredibly handy feature @quochuy! I ran into needing them a while back and discovered that eSteem provides them but this change would make things much simpler.
A feature that I keep day dreaming about is being able to push RSS content to Twitter automatically from Steemit. Being able to set custom hashtags for the tweet each time I post would be handy also. Basically something like what sites like https://dlvrit.com/ do but baked into the web frontend or in your case the Condenser app.
I think that this kind of social integration and automated cross-posting would help with Steem #onboarding and encourage more current users to share their Steem content to other social platforms.
Thanks for the feedback.
I don’t think the Condenser can automate posting of tweets as there is no backend process that would run on a regular basis to post them. You can probably use Zapier or IFTTT to read the RSS and send tweets.
Posted using Partiko iOS
Thanks for the clarification.
If you just want to auto tweet all of your steem posts that's already possible. I was writing about it lately in this article,
https://steemit.com/posh/@niallon11/auto-tweet-your-steem-posts
and there is a step by step here to set it up.
https://steemit.com/steem/@horpey/share-steem-post-to-twitter-with-hashtags-automatically-for-good-steem-impression-on-twitter
I've alo set it up to share my tweets to a Facebook group and it's great to automate all of it while getting extra views.
I made a similar article recently but my point is that it would be nice to not have to use external sites/services (especially centralized ones) to accomplish auto posting to Twitter or other platforms.
Very cool! I know that esteem recently added RSS, and I've been using steemrss.com. It'll be nice to have it available from all condenser sites, though. I didn't know about the .json trick, either, so thanks for the tip!
I guess when it’s approved and merged, the other condenser sites can pull it into their codebase too.
Posted using Partiko iOS
That's awesome. Like really really awesome. I didn't know about the .json at the end of a url.
Nice work on the rss. It would be awesome to pull a community feed to my website. I need to look at this post again, resteemed to remind me
That .json makes it even easier than querying the blockchain with steemjs 😂
Posted using Partiko iOS
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Excellent work @quochuy .
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end of the year and we have this good news with this steem group
awesome wow
Thanks for the post.
@quochuy please be aware that for no reason you autofollow ocd flags on me, i thought you will notice withotu me writing but seems not. please remove me from the list of whitelist.
thank you.
I’m not following OCD, however I do follow Trafalgar who seemed to have downvoted some of your posts, probably due for some vote buying from some bots. I’ll review my config
Posted using Partiko iOS
i did NOT buy single bot vote... seems traf is misconfigured. please fix.
thanks!
great updates here shared in my post even about 3speak
Downvoted for vote farming @steemflagrewards
Self vote all-star ⭐️⭐️ Keep waiting until day 6 to try and sneak them in. Great job!!! Gotta keep those self vote stats up.
I asked my self, how the hell is @bigdaddy so lucky, turns out:
Haha, you can't make this shit up. ~68%? That's got to be some sort of record for self voting?!
Nope not even close.
Back in the days of @sadkitten, there were several 100% self-voters.
Also, this old meme.
https://steempeak.com/dmania/@enforcer48/when-you-are-so-close-to-self-vote-nirvana-but-you-still-have-a-shread-of-humanity-left-zg1hbmlh-z3uny
He threatened @Azircon that his plan was to just make more self voting accounts if he didn't get his way.. LMAO
you misread, i said i wont do what he likes and makes 100s of accounts to fake stats like those guys do. of course u are in voting-circle so u dont care.
LMAO, I don't trade votes with anyone.
Get out of here with that shit. Nice try though.
ME:
My Alt
You
More than half your graph is you voting yourself. That doesn't even account for the 13k steem power I have delegated to curation and other initiatives. Almost as much steem power as you own. But I'll fix that. I'll buy 3k more steem so that I can be sure I've got more delegated off my alt than the Crypto OG has actual SP.