I've used RSSInclude for an app. Now I'd like to duplicate this app with different content, however it's too risky to depend on a service that could disappear. Is it possible for me to create something like RSSInclude? Would either of these options could work? I appreciate any suggestions. I need the rss to display within an html doc like this: https://www.buzztouchmods.com/hosted/shenry/files/applications/EAE0C5F4496F9D24025F8E12D/documents/hydeparkchristianchurch.html Here's what I've found: feed2js http://feed2js.org/: Download, configure, and install instance of Feed2JS. https://github.com/cogdog/feed2js http://feed2js.org/index.php?s=download or this option: Alternative to Javascript, use PHP to parse and display the RSS feed. SimplePie offers a free PHP class that makes it relatively easy to use your own web server to display RSS feeds. http://simplepie.org/

@shenry. I've been looking for alternative RSS options too. I just find the plugin I used to be too slow in my app (try out the feeds in app "BC Tech"). Your app seems much faster in terms of retrieving feeds. Not sure why yours seem so much faster :-) So, in all fairness, the RSS feed speed could be the source being slow. But, it will be good to check out these options too (came across some of them from my research). Ideally, if there was some sort of pre-caching to speed up display, that would be cool in my opinion. Looks like we're both trying to find the ideal solution :-) Cheers

@BuzzingSteve, I'm not actually having a problem with the RSS plugin being too slow. It's working fine for me. RSSInclude is working well too. I created a script in RSSInclude and put it within an html doc, rather than have the RSS link to a website. My concern is that it's too risky to build an app that is so dependent on an outside service (RSSInclude). If they disappear, I'm sunk. I just downloaded BT Tech (nice app) The most recent feed shows today at 3:03pm. So, doesn't seem too slow.

@shenry. Thanks for trying BC Tech. I find that it's not how current the feed is, but how quickly the feed list is displayed. At least for me, your feed list shows up much faster than the feed lists in my app:-) Just wondering if your feeds are hosted on a much faster server?

The feeds are coming from my website, just a typical wordpress site hosted on webhostinghub. Buzztouch is hosted on buzztouchmods. But seems my loading time can be slow at times too.

Hmmm...might be just Yahoo Pipes then, which is what I'm using to filter/combine/sort the feeds. Here's another link...they list a bunch of RSS to HTML sites/services (you need to scroll down to see them). You've probably seen most of them, but there might be a nugget in there :-) http://www.masternewmedia.org/content_delivery_and_distibution/RSS-to-HTML/RSS-to-HTML-conversion-tools/2007-03-30.htm

I'm using yahoo pipes too. (but again, it makes me really nervous, because what if Yahoo decides to drop Pipes) There seem to be quite a few RSS to HTML services. I'm using RSSInclude now, but scared it could disappear - and there goes all my apps. I'm interested in creating my own version of RSS-to-javascript on my server. I just don't know the first step to take.:(

I'm with you there. But I wouldn't be too worried about Yahoo Pipes just yet. But a backup plan is always good...just in case :-)

Hmmm, what about this: http://www.geckotribe.com/rss/carp/#sampleform

Hi Shenry, I'm in a similar dilemma, with Yahoo Pipes, also looking for an alternative. The Yahoo lead developer is responsive to questions and reassuring about Pipes capacity, but who knows where Marissa's axe will fall hey? After lots of research I've gone with http://fivefilters.org/ - they have an RSS reader that does a lot, and for 20 euros can be run off your own server. It was until recently a full text extractor, but I put in a request and now you can limit to a paragraph or two of intro blurb, with a link to the website. I feel more comfortable with just an extract of someone else's website than the full content, especially for a paid app. Finally they suggest setting up on an a 'platform as a service provider' eg Appfog, etc ( http://help.fivefilters.org/customer/portal/articles/1143210-hosting ) - the reason you might want to do this is that if your like me, then you aren't completely convinced your shared inexpensive server can take the server load when the app goes live and gets loads of requests, or have 100% up time. These PaaS are designed for it. I'm still in the process of setting this up as a backup plan, but probably will go live with it when my next app update.

@Rohan, Interesting, thanks. One thing I really like about yahoopipes is that with Regex, I can redirect the RSS link - so instead of linking back to my website I can redirect to an html doc within the app. Any chance that fivefilters could do the same?

Hey @shenry, If you have wordpress then why don't you use their feed? LA

FiveFilters work great. Also, check this script: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/3222229/rss.zip

@LA, I start off with their feed, but use YahooPipes to clean it up, truncate to show only the last post of a certain category, and in some cases show an RSS feed in alphabetical order rather than chronological. It's fun to see how precise you can get a feed.

@shenry, Yeah I understand now..lol Let me know what you end up going with because I have a feed that need to put in my App. LA

Not really clear about what you're trying to achieve, an rss feed by its very nature is pulling in external data, and then presumably jf you click it the feed link it will load up the external webpage within the Buzztouch webview html screen, no? Or have you already created the HTML content within the app and are trying to link to it? The fivefilters prog will do JSON if that's any help, so for example it should be possible to integrate it into a menu list for example, not just an html screen. Also @LA is correct in suggesting using a Wordpress RSS plugin, but again depends on how reliable you web host is, and if it has load balancing.

Funny, looks like I just lost my jobs feed that was going through Yahoo Pipes...but problem seems to be the originating site, not Yahoo Pipes. And now it works in iPhone, but not on iPad :-) Gotta put out a bug fix to use Scringo 2.2.2 so it would be cool to fix this inconsistency :-) LOL

I guess I'll be checking out Fivefilters, Thanks @mysps I sent you a message about montesino.

Hi @shenry Very interesting thread, I have the same issues as you. For IOS I use an rss plug-in, but I use rssincludes for Android projects. The idea of self-hosting a service that does something similar to rssincludes is appealing, for reasons you've outlined. I thought about the 'what if rssincludes stops' question too. It is a typical risk scenario - how likely is it to happen? and what is the impact if it does?. How likely? - rssincludes have a lot of users, a commercial model and they are popular. So I don't *think* it is very likely, but it is hard to be sure. If the rssincludes service does stop, there are alternatives, I could switch to if I really had to. I keep the buzztouch html pages I use to show rss outside the core project build so they are easily up-datable for that reason alone. I'm interested to hear how well you get on with the self hosted options and if you find they match rssincludes. Cheers, Alan

Just tried fivefilters and feed2js. Looks like you would need both - fivefilters to get the feed content the way you want, feed2js to manage the presentation (for Android at least). Alan

@shenry. Have you tried this: http://pordl.com Cheers Steve

@BuzzingSteve, I hadn't seen this, but it seems to be a service like RSSInclude. I think if pordl.com disappeared, my app wouldn't function. Chris1 had and idea to use Menu with Image plugin rather that RSS plugin, and to use PHP and JSON, I don't know PHP or JSON yet, so I can't tell you how it works, but here's how he would see it working (I host wordpress on webhostinghum, that's where it comes from in process): 1) App loads Menu with Image screen 2) Menu with Image screen goes to www.server.com/somescript.php to get the json data for what rows to display 3) somescript.php goes to webhostinghub.com/wordpress/rss.xml to get the rss data 4) somescript.php analyzes the rss feed, turns each part into variables, then prints out (using 'echo' statements) json data 5) Menu with Image screen sees the json data printed out, analyzes it and displays menu rows as directed.

RSS is really powerful; I use it as much as I can, as it can produce a dynamic menu for lots of potential app content - e.g. calendars, photo's, articles. I am now running Feed2js off my server - it works straight out of the box. I can see me switching to this from rssincludes, as it can be styled with CSS to produce something that looks very similar to a simple menu and there are no volume restrictions. Next I'm going to look for something that reads an RSS feed and can generate a full text feed running on my own server. Source code for fivefilters is on github, I'm not sure if can produce an output feed though. All good fun!

@AlanMac, sounds promising. The key is getting that full text feed to show up in an html doc on the app - rather than being directed to the external site. At least in my case, I'm pulling the RSS from my own website.

I am now running fivefilters and feed2js on my server and I am pleased with the results; I'll be switching to these for my apps in the near future. I use fivefilters to read a feed from an external rss source and produces a second feed, which can contain all the content and not just the summary. Fivefilters has extra facilities such as the ability to convert the output to json, not sure how to use this yet. For our apps, we have an ios plugin to do display rss feeds, for Android, we can use Fivefilters. Feed2js handles rss feeds nicely and plenty of options. Using CSS can take a little more fiddling than rssincludes, but I have found that in an html doc page, the results can be made to look visually quite similar to the ios plugin. I'm happy. Alan

awesome @alanmac . can you show a screenshot of the feedlist and the output html page?

Hi @mysps Here is a screengrab of a feed using the ios rss plugin https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/44302941/plugin.PNG And here is a screengrab of the same feed using feed2js. https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/44302941/feed2js.PNG

@AlanMac. Nice. So, you're using the RD Simple RSS plugin? How did you get more than 1 line of story content showing for each feed item? Did you adjust the "RSS List Row Height, Font Size" to get that? If so, I'd be curious to know what values you used. Cheers Steve P.S. I didn't know TESCO provided mobile services :-) I have an unlocked iPhone 4 (it's off contract now), so any recommendations on which SIM card/service I should use when I'm there in London and then Ireland? I'm thinking pay-as-you type, which is good and also might provide a little bit of data to check email :-)

Because it's all in an html doc, can you compile same app in ios and android?

Ah, so it's an HTML Doc...not the iOS RSS plugin :-)

@shenry, yes, works on Android too. I can't do a screengrab but it does. Steve, Tesco mobile for payg is one of the best;it is on the O2 network. Alternatively gif-gaff for £10/month will give you loads of data.

Actually, the one titled plugin is indeed the ios plugin, with line spacing around 45 and normal text at 13px. The other one titled feed2jss uses the custom url plugin pointing to a page on my host. They are both screen grabs from a test app on my iPhone.

can you show the article page @Alan!

@mysps - do you meen the feed url http://feeds.bbci.co.uk/sport/0/formula1/rss.xml ?

no sorry. by using the feed2js is the article page optimized for the mobile? or does it load normally?

@AlanMac...can you also send a screen grab of your "RSS List Row Height, Font Size" for the control panel for the iOS RSS plugin? LOL. Will check out Tesco and gif-gaff. Cheers

Hi Steve - here you go https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/44302941/rss-plugin-rows.png

Nice. Thanks! How come I don't see the "List header height" shown at bottom of your screen grab in control panel?

@mysps, I think you mean the html source for the page. All I did there was drop the javascript into a web page and reference the css that feed2js provide. I suggest you play at http://feed2js.org/index.php?s=build and http://feed2js.org/index.php?s=style - thats what I did.

@AlanMac, I think what @mysps is asking - and what I'd like to see too- is what does the screen look like when you click on the item. Does it take the user to the website? Is that something you could show in a screenshot? thanks.

Great discussion so far...intrigued to see where it all leads :-) And if this one technique can be used on both iOS and Android :-)

@buzzingSteve because it's simply an html doc, it does work with both - if I understand correctly.

thanks @shenry. i know at times i don't explain things well :) i'll play with it myself to find out once i have time. did you find a better solution?

@BuzzingSteve - the plugin I use is the buzztouch mods one by PSM Danny - https://buzztouchmods.com/downloads.php?cat_id=1&download_id=14 . I've been using this before the RD one was published on the market.

@shenry, @mysps, I think I understand what you mean now about the article page now that I have slept on the matter. If you click on the link in any RSS summary, the link always takes you to the feed source story. Page formatting is entirely under the control of the feed owner. Usually the source page is not mobile friendly, often with multiple columns and you may need to pinch and zoom to read. The link http://feeds.bbci.co.uk/sport/0/formula1/rss.xml that I posted above will demonstrate this - try it in a mobile browser. If you use fivefilters, you can extract more of the story, but clicking on the link will still take you through to the source story. If you wish to control the styling, the only way I know how to do that would be to host the stories for the feed on your own server and run your own RSS feed. I don't think there are any short cuts. If you manage to extract all the content from another feed and host it (fivefilters may help here, I haven't tried), then you can control the presentation, but that raises another issue to do with maybe needing permission from the originator.

@AlanMac: "...but that raises another issue to do with maybe needing permission from the originator." Exactly what I was thinking...it's like you're presenting the material as your own without any acknowledgement of the source.

@BuzzingSteve, up to now it's been a technology discussion. I realise that by mentioning how to present other peoples content, it really becomes a whole new discussion. If we have the technology to do so, it doesn't mean we can always use it. In some scenario's, e.g. if the app is for a client for an owns the content, it might be fine. In another scenario, the content may well be copyright and/or has terms conditions associated with its use. All I'm saying is tread carefully...