Atom and RSS format activity stream for user feed

[evanp]

For OStatus compatibility, make an Atom-encoded stream for each user.

[Erkan-Yilmaz]

+1

[evanp]

I think this might be better done with a bridge than having it in the core software.

I think it's relatively easy to write a service that provides RSS or Atom feeds to anonymous clients for any user.

• The URL should look something like https://something.example/user@domain.example
• When this URL is hit, the service should register as an OAuth client for domain.example, if it isn't registered already.
• It should then fetch the activity outbox of user@domain.example.
• It can then transform the Activity Streams JSON into Activity Streams RSS or Activity Streams Atom.

[shtrom]

👍

[csolisr]

By the way, if this bug is fixed, could somebody tell me how to access my RSS feed?

[larjona]

#451 is closed, this issue is still open.
For now, you can get your feed in JSON format:
https://pumpserverofyouraccount/api/user/yourpumpusername/feed
For example, mine is at:
https://pumpdog.me/api/user/larjona_test/feed

[larjona]

@Gratty you need to login first in the server, and then obtain the feed.
In my case, go to https://pumpdog.me and login with your pump.io account, and after that, go to https://pumpdog.me/api/user/larjona_test/feed

[dirkk0]

Kudos to PyPump, I created a set of scripts that people might find useful as a starting point to create an RSS feed:
https://gist.github.com/dirkk0/5875461
In general it shows how you can access the feed with a python script that - once it is registered as an OAuth client - can export to status updates as a list, which is easy to convert into a RSS stream.

I am not sure if this is the best way to do this though.

[evanp]

@DixieLad So, that's definitely the case. I think there are two big problems there.

1. You always need software to fetch stuff, unless the feed is written on stone tablets and you can go pick it up manually.
2. Other individual watchers is great; random software with bad intentions is less so. I'm not convinced that being watched by anonymous third parties in difficult-to-trace ways is what pump.io users want.

I am simply unsure about this stuff. It's also something that we can't undo once we do it.

[erincandescent]

Is it really any different from what you can already do with the fire hose?
On 1 Jul 2013 14:52, "Evan Prodromou" notifications@github.com wrote:

@DixieLad https://github.com/DixieLad So, that's definitely the case. I
think there are two big problems there.

You always need software to fetch stuff, unless the feed is written on
stone tablets and you can go pick it up manually.
2.

Other individual watchers is great; random software with bad
intentions is less so. I'm not convinced that being watched by anonymous
third parties in difficult-to-trace ways is what pump.io users want.

I am simply unsure about this stuff. It's also something that we can't
undo once we do it.

—
Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHubhttps://github.com//issues/55#issuecomment-20282808
.

[dirkk0]

@evanp I see. Couldn't this be configurable, with default 'public_feed': false ?

[olberger]

Is there any Activity Stream consumer in IFTTT.com that could be used, for instance ?

[anarcat]

I think this should be core. Activity Stream and RSS feeds are long established open standards that should be supported out of the box. I understand why (say) the twitter bridge would be separate, but really, this should be factored in.

Otherwise we loose all the people still on gnu social/statusnet, and that would be a shame.

[schmonz]

I was relying on RSS to get new status updates from the people I follow. (In general, I rely on RSS to tell me when things change, and am unlikely to check for changes where RSS is unavailable.) I'm not sure whether this is the same issue being discussed here; apologies if not.

[evanp]

@anarcat I'm not supporting multiple output formats in core. pump.io is about doing things once, and doing them right. I don't want options. The bridge option will work fine.

[ghost]

Other individual watchers is great; random software with bad intentions is less so. I'm not convinced that being watched by anonymous third parties in difficult-to-trace ways is what pump.io users want.

I'm not sure there are practical downsides of this kind to RSS feeds? The posts are public.

FWIW, my 1.5c: this isn't a privacy matter, because it's about the public feed (unless I misunderstand this whole issue). Seemingly hide the content may provide users of pump.io with a false sense of privacy. OTOH, for external individual users, missing a straightforward RSS subscription is probably a usability drawback.

[joeyh]

I've built a horrible workaround for this bug.

http://git.kitenet.net/?p=joey/src.git;a=blob;f=misc/pumpRss.hs

[nemobis]

Wonderful, now we only need some web app/service providing everyone with that horrible hack. :)
(Is that really easier that whatever API or federated system pump.io provides?)

[ao2]

Here's a solution similar to Joeys which also supports scraping public timelines on Twitter, I call it Tweeper:

http://ao2.it/92

Maybe just a little less horrible, but it really depends on how much xsl and xpath scare you :)

[evanp]

OK, so, I just put up a rudimentary service to handle this case:

https://pump2rss.com/

The software is Open Source at e14n/pump2rss so I'm going to shift this discussion over there.