I was just about to write a post talking up the release of RSS listings of OpenLearn courses, as well as the far, far more exciting news that RSS versions of the OpenLearn units themselves are being made available (e.g. see this list of OpenLearn Units as RSS), but you know what...? I'm not going to...
The value-add I had in mind for the post was intended to be a quick 10 minute script that took an RSS feed of course units, used a simple string rewrite of the URLs to convert them to URLs that pointed to the RSS feeds, and then bundled them up in an OPML file for viewing in Grazr.
But you know what?
Whilst the RSS listings of course units point - quite sensibly - to the "tidy" URL for each course (something like http://openlearn.open.ac.uk/course/view.php?name=A103_1 for example), the unit content RSS feeds themselves (and the actual links to the course units on the HTML version of the page) use a nasty URL, such as http://openlearn.open.ac.uk/course/view.php?id=1472 for a course unit, and http://openlearn.open.ac.uk/file.php/1472/formats/A103_1_rss.xml for a feed.
The number in the URL - 1472 in the above case - is of course unique to each unit, though it is consistent across HTML and RSS locations of the same unit.
And it doesn't appear anywhere in the "All OpenLearn Units", or OpenLearn Units by topic, RSS feeds.
So I can't use the RSS feed(s) of course units to produce an OPML feed that points to the RSS versions of the units...
That is, I can't even create the URL for the RSS version of a unit from the unit's description in the course listing feed...
So close, folks, yet so far away...
[UPDATE: there is- apparently - a sensible URL for the RSS feeds that works; for example http://openlearn.open.ac.uk/file.php/A103_1/formats/A103_1_rss.xml
Which means ... I can get a feed of content feeds. For example, here are the Science and Nature units via an OPML feed. Note that at the moment, they don;lt seem to work in either Grazr or Optimal browser...]
Posted by ajh59 at September 6, 2007 09:14 PMHum, how to put this without sounding stroppy?
"All things come to he who waits", or as I would say to my 5-yr old "Patience, patience"!
OPML feeds are on our current work program due for delivery early January 2008.
But, if you insist on doing my job for me (and why should I complain???) Moodle will always report the id number in the url but you can use the slightly friendlier short code like we do in the RSS feed urls. So the code based url for an RSS feed of the content is http://openlearn.open.ac.uk/file.php/A103_1/formats/A103_1_rss.xml
Posted by: Jenny at September 7, 2007 10:14 AM