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benjymous wrote:
an app you run on your computer that can be configured to read in web data from one source (a service, or just a normal web page), and convert it into an RSS feed.
Is there an easy way of using web services from VC6 (I can't afford .NET yet)
You don't need to even go to all the trouble of using SOAP and the webservice proxy etc. etc. All you need to do is call the URL of the web service with the required parametres and it returns an XML document.
So you could actually have a simple app which transforms (using XSL naturally) the returned XML document into a RSS document.
Wow, actually that sounds great  Let me go and do it quick 
btw. you can see how to use a web service directly (without soap etc.) in my CP+ article, though it does use .NET classes, you could use the HTTPResponse objects in "normal" C++ I am sure. It is just XML doc over HTTP.
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To work from trillian pro, it'll need to run as a mini web server (of course all it'll serve is the RSS feeds). Trillian lets you set the port, so it doesn't have to run on port 80
Do you think you could create some sort of simple query language to make it easy to parse any input data (such as html pages)
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Help me! I'm turning into a grapefruit!
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Yes - it will happen.
cheers,
Chris Maunder
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yay, thanks
Just as a point of reference, it only took me about half an hour to make a perl script to generate the rss feed for my site (as I just hacked apart the code that generates the html for the main page and modified it to format in the rss xml format instead)
http://www.grapefruitopia.com/cgi-bin/blogfeed.cgi[^]
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Help me! I'm turning into a grapefruit!
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Cool - I'll give it a try when I get home
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Help me! I'm turning into a grapefruit!
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That was fast!!!
Regards,
Brian Dela
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Brian Delahunty wrote:
That was fast!!!
Well considering all it involves is two files, it was fast
The ASPX file simply takes an XSL file and transforms the returned XML file (which CP gives me on a silver platter) into an RSS compliant XML file. Funnily enough I first tried to do it in normal ASP, but it proved to be very unreliable (MSXML through ASP does not like loading remote XML docs strangely) and then in ASP.NET. ASP.NET was far better and fewer lines of code.
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Paul Watson wrote:
The ASPX file simply takes an XSL file and transforms the returned XML file (which CP gives me on a silver platter) into an RSS compliant XML file. Funnily enough I first tried to do it in normal ASP, but it proved to be very unreliable (MSXML through ASP does not like loading remote XML docs strangely) and then in ASP.NET. ASP.NET was far better
To be honest I know very little about XML and ASP.NET... only starting in those areas now. So.. Any suggestions on where to start???
Regards,
Brian Dela
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Brian Delahunty wrote:
To be honest I know very little about XML and ASP.NET... only starting in those areas now. So.. Any suggestions on where to start???
XML and it's kin (XSL, XSL:FO, SVG etc. etc.) I love, it is truly awesome stuff. ASP.NET is quite nice (I like .NET, but I think ASP.NET is not ready for prime time...)
Saying that here are some resources (all open in a new window, respek' to Chris):
I recommend for pure interest sake that you get into XML and XSL. Check out the sublime feeling when you take an XML data file and transform it into and XHTML doc with XSL, simple but just so cool. Something about it that just rocks.
And of course you can always just ask me, or post a question in the XML/XSL forum.
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Paul Watson wrote:
I recommend for pure interest sake that you get into XML and XSL. Check out the sublime feeling when you take an XML data file and transform it into and XHTML doc with XSL, simple but just so cool. Something about it that just rocks.
What do you normally use it for... Personally I probably won't have much use fot XML, XSL etc at the moment but hopefully in the future.. What do you normally use it for.. if you don't mind me asking.
Regards,
Brian Dela
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Brian Delahunty wrote:
What do you normally use it for
Mainly for our content management systems for websites. We store the content in XML files and use XSL to transform it to HTML and then send it to the client browser.
Also recently used XML to power an SVG graph using XSL (an article for CP on that soon.)
XML is also damned nice for app settings (better than an INI file or using the registry.)
XML also makes more sense than a relational database (like SQL or Oracle) when the data is hierarchical.
And finally the thing that XML is used for the most, and which we have done with great joy, is integration. Maybe a legacy accounting package which outputs to CVS and needs to be integrated into a new web site. Using XSL and XML for that is great.
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Cool .Thanks for the info Paul. I know I shoudl know all this stuff already but I just hadn't the time. I didn't even knwo you had XML data files!!! --> How is the data stored in these??? [Please tell me to bugger off If I'm annoying you]
Regards,
Brian Dela
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Brian Delahunty wrote:
How is the data stored in these???
XML is a text format and you just store your XML text in a, well, text file with a .XML extension.
Here is a very simple XML snippet which you can save to brian.xml and have your first XML document/file.
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<cpians>
<cpian id="144040">
<firstname>Brian</firstname>
<lastname>Delahunty</lastname>
<birthdate>01 January 1901</birthdate>
</cpian>
<cpian id="42">
<firstname>Baba</firstname>
<lastname>Jub</lastname>
<birthdate>24 October 1979</birthdate>
</cpian>
</cpians>
In that cpians is the "root" node which contains all other nodes. Then there is a list of cpian nodes, in which are standard elements (fields) like firstname and birthdate.
The id bit is called an attribute btw.
It is really very simple to get the basics in.
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Thanks Paul. Done a bit of reading on it last night.. seems fairly cool.
Regards,
Brian Dela
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Hmm. It didn't work in trillian 
No error message - it just refused to load any items.
It could be that you're lacking the line:
<!DOCTYPE rss PUBLIC "-//Netscape Communications//DTD RSS 0.91//EN"<br />
"http://my.netscape.com/publish/formats/rss-0.91.dtd">
Which should come between the <?xml version="1.0"?> and <rss version="0.91"> lines
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Help me! I'm turning into a grapefruit!
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benjymous wrote:
It could be that you're lacking the line:
Which should come between the and <rss version="0.91"> lines
I downloaded an RSS feed reader and I noticed my feed was not working. I put in the doctype, but no luck. There is something else going on, as soon as I have fixed it I will upload and you can try again. Seems like RSS is very finicky
Also any idea what DTD URL can I use for RSS 1.0?
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the only thing I can see that might be an issue is the "xmlns:codeproject="http://codeproject.com/webservices/" bit in the rss tag. The rest looks pretty standard to me
Paul Watson wrote:
I downloaded an RSS feed reader
Ooh, can you give me a url? (I've only tested my feed on trillian, so can't be certain it actually works properly)
Paul Watson wrote:
Also any idea what DTD URL can I use for RSS 1.0?
Nope. How about doing a google search for other RSS feeds and see what they use?
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Help me! I'm turning into a grapefruit!
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benjymous wrote:
the only thing I can see that might be an issue is the "xmlns:codeproject="http://codeproject.com/webservices/" bit in the rss tag
God that drove me mad. The xml feed from the CP webservices have that namespace declaration. Now the XSL has to have that namespace declaration to properly access the XML-DOM. At first I did not notice it and I banged my head against the wall trying to figure out why the xsl:for-each was not picking anything up.
But anyway, I removed that namespace decl. from the xml file to see if it was it, but it wasn't (thankfully, otherwise I would have to modify the xml source feed before transform, which is just dirty work.)
benjymous wrote:
Ooh, can you give me a url? (I've only tested my feed on trillian, so can't be certain it actually works properly)
Feedreader[^]
It is actually quite a sweet little app. It reads your RSS feed fine, but not mine.
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Ooh, what about mime type? I use:
"Content-type: text/xml\n\n"
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Help me! I'm turning into a grapefruit!
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We have MFC, ATL, and WTL forums, what about a forum for the non-Microsoft windowing libraries and toolkits?
Jason Gerard
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I suggest that you change the background color of the line that shows a message that the logged in user posted. Sometimes it is diffcult to track down where I have posted and what was a response to my post...
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Ray Cassick wrote:
Sometimes it is diffcult to track down where I have posted and what was a response to my post...
Keep an eye out for your name  
Regards,
Brian Dela
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