RSS feed that returns the link to the post and not the the link to the content

[phelix001]

lemmy

The current rss feed of a discussion is located at
https://dev.lemmy.ml/feeds/c/blender.xml
This returns an rss feed with the links to the original content.

I need an rss feed exactly like that but returns links to the post on lemmy for twtter posting to drive traffic to the conversation, not the content.

(Write your answer here.)

Describe the solution you'd like

I'd like soemthing like
https://dev.lemmy.ml/feeds2/c/blender.xml
that returns the link to the conversation, not the link to OC.

Describe alternatives you've considered

Let us know about other solutions you've tried or researched.

(Write your answer here.)

Additional context

Is there anything else you can add about the proposal?
It appears that the current feed creator doesn't work when its a selfpost because there is no OC to point to.
You might want to link to related issues here, if you haven't already.

(Write your answer here.)

[Nutomic]

Check the <comments> or <guid> fields, those link to the post and should be exactly what you need.

[dessalines]

I'm actually in favor of changing even the main link field, to point to the lemmy post link instead. Not necessarily to drive traffic to lemmy (i don't care about that), but just that the conversations around the links can often be more important than the links themselves.

[Nutomic]

Can we still put the link somewhere in the RSS then? I'm not sure if there's a good field for that.

[dessalines]

    let mut description = format!("submitted by <a href=\"{}\">{}</a> to <a href=\"{}\">{}</a><br>{} points | <a href=\"{}\">{} comments</a>",
    p.creator.actor_id,
    p.creator.name,
    community_url,
    p.community.name,
    p.counts.score,
    post_url,
    p.counts.comments);

    if let Some(body) = p.post.body {
      let html = markdown_to_html(&body);
      description.push_str(&html);
    }

    i.description(description);

We could add it to the description html above the body, something like:

if let Some(url) = ....

and change this to use the post_url instead of the link:

    if let Some(url) = p.post.url {
      i.link(url);
    }

[kixiQu]

Well, I was relying on that link. :/ Is there a reason not to use some other XML field for the external link? I've been under the impression that any parsing of the description was going to be extremely, uh, subject to change, so I really don't want to formally depend on its unspecified structure beyond what I'm already doing.

[Nutomic]

Before this change, we used to have the Lemmy post URL in <comments> and <guid> fields, and the external link (if any) in the <link> field. Now we have the Lemmy URL in all three fields, which really seems useless. I propose that we revert the commit 37ad9e9.

[dessalines]

We have a case here where someone wants the rss link field to go to the lemmy post link /post/xxx (which includes the conversation), and another wants it to go to the linked url (not always there). Not sure how to resolve it other than taking it to a vote on lemmy.

[Nutomic]

@phelix001 Is there any reason why you want the link field specifically to go to Lemmy? Cant you read the Lemmy link from comments instead?

[kixiQu]

I would be perfectly happy, by the way, with the external URL being in some other field, if that's judged to be appropriate -- I'm just hoping it'll land in its own little XML field (perhaps in addition to the description). The current state is pretty close to what Reddit does, so it's certainly not unreasonable prima facie.

[Nutomic]

Well the only field that seems to make sense for the external URL is link. And it seems that phelix001 isnt active on Github, so we shouldnt expect a response from them anytime soon.