Category: YahooPipes

Yahoo has given a great oppurtunity for non programmers to try their hand at programming without involving any codes. Being a Graphical User Interface.. or rahter in a lay-man’s term.. drag -and-drop and start building is the motto of Yahoo Pipes. Its essential we gather some knowledge about Web-feeds towards understnaing Yahoo pipes.Following which, Building your own personal Yahoo Pipe shall not be difficult

However, once you have completed and executed your yahoo pipe, you might want to use the data it gives ( after all the personalised sorting and filtering) into your blog. For this you might have to go back and Run your pipe and get the Rss -feed-of-the-Pipe using the link at the bottom of your pipe result

Using the Pipe-feed to display data within your blog

1. By using the Blogger-Feed-Widget
1. Select  Template-Page Elements – Feed Widget
2. Give the Rss Feed of the Pipe
3. If all is well.. this widget will give you the top 5 results of the pipe
2. By using services of Feed2JS
1. Feed2JS ( Feed to Javascript) is a site that helps us in converting our Rss Feeds into script code.. which can be used in the HTML / Javascript widget of the blogger
2. This shall display as many result you have chosen in the pipe ( using the Truncate Module)

1. Go to Feed2JS
2. Give the Rss of the Pipe in the URL field
3. Select the Various options appropriately
4. Select the UTF-8 Character Encoding if you want to display non-english languages
5. Click on Preview feed before generating the Javascript
6. Use the code generated here in the HTML Widget of the blog

Your appreciation is my motivation

Yahoo pipes as I said earlier has several modules(components) that you can use in a combination that best fits your idea .. however for a begginer.. I shall be using the Fetch-Feed Module , Sort Module and the Truncate module

Conceptualizing the pipe:-
This is like figuring out what you want from the pipe.. It would be rather irrelevant that you open the pipes-edit page and stare at the screen while you have no idea what you want.
My Pipe concept :- Display the result of the 3 blog fields in the latest post apprearing first and display only first 15 results
(A)Organising your concept :- This gives you a headstart in choosing the modules

1. Give the post feed for the 3 blogs that I have chosen
2. sort the result so that the latest post is seen first in order of the published date
3. Show only top 15 results ( logically assuming that posts beyond the top 15 are all older posts)

(B)Building your First Yahoo Pipe :- By organising your concept.. you can very well say that you will be using the following module

Fetch Feed Module	Where you give the Feed URL
Sort Module	Which arranges the result in ascending / descending order of published date
Truncate Module	Stops the Feed module from retrieving more results after the top 15

(C)Creating your First Yahoo Pipe:-Browse through this post to get an idea as to how to use the various modules

1. Go to Yahoo Pipes
2. Sign In using your Yahoo Account
3. Click on:- Create a Pipe
4. Drag down the workspace where the modules are inserted
5. Drag a Feed Module
1. By default it allows you add one Rss feed.
2. I shall be using 3 Rss feeds for test purpose ( 3 languages)
3. To be able to add more than 1 Rss feed click on the ” + ” of the Feed module
4. http://beta-templatetesting.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default?alt=rss
   http://epandit.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default?alt=rss
   http://tamilblogging.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default?alt=rss
5. Click on the Title of the Feed module and see the results of the feed in the Debugger frame
6. Drag a Sort Module
1. Connect the output of the Feed Module to the Input of the sort Module
2. After the module gets updated…
3. Select item.pubdate and sort in descending order
4. Click on the Title-bar of the Sort module to view the results in the debugger

Drag a Truncate Module

1. Connect the Output of the Sort Module to the input of the Truncate module
2. Give the value as ” 15“
3. Connect the Truncate module to the Pipe Output

Save the Pipe as My First Yahoo Pipe

(D)Executing your Pipe and get its Rss feed

1. Run the Pipe…and see the results in the browser
2. Further down the page.. you will be able to see as
3. Right click -Properties – Copy the URL in a notepad …This is the RSS feed for this particular pipe

Using Yahoo Pipes in blogs
Your appreciation is my motivation

We learnt a little bit about web-feed as a warm-up session towards understanding Yahoo Pipes. Now let see what yahoo pipes is all about and how it can be put to use by an average blogger / web developer However an advanced developer can work as far as his logical imagination can take him

Yahoo Pipes – Its a A Feed Aggregator
Yahoo Pipes is a Web-Application by Yahoo… That allows the users to create their own aggregation of feeds without any sort of coding. Yahoo Pipes uses a Graphical-User-Interface allowing users to Drag-Drop controls

Basics – for the Average Joe / Jane
As a blogger, I presume certain subjects / people interests you more than the other .so you would like to keep a track of upcoming posts on those areas among your blogging circle of friends. In this fast paced world.. we do not always have time to visit the entire list of friend’s blog .Subscribing to their blogs will put an update in your inbox when a new post is made.. But then with the friends list growing lengthier by the day.. you would also not prefer to see your inbox bombarded with updates alone.

So to save you all the trouble you can create a yahoo-pipe (Create a Basic Yahoo Pipe) specifying the Web-feed URL of the respective blogs/websites ..where in the results are manipulated ( as you wish) ..say.. within a date range.. only top-15 results – sorted in ascending/descending order… displaying just the title only or along with the description …just about anyting you can think of…You can also perform custom search ..and manipulate the results

Once you are satisfied with the results of the pipe you have created you can now use the Web-feed-of-your-pipe into your blog by either directly giving it in the feed-widget of blogger ( this displays only the top 5 results by default)…. or convert Web-feed-of-your-pipe into a script code ( Using Yahoo Pipe in Blogs ) and insert that code into the HTML/JavaScript widget of blogger and see exactly the same result as you would see when you execute the pipe

If you are the more adventurous type.. you can configure your pipe such that it can take input ( URL / text / dates..etc etc) and execute them to give the concerned results

Moreover… if you have the appropriate fonts installed you can use the pipe to retrieve data from blogs/ website in other languages as well ( In my Sample Pipe I have used the Rss of English – Tamil – Hindi Blogs)
Your appreciation is my motivation

Many must have been seeing news snippets regarding Yahoo-pipes in the blogs that you pass by.. more adventurous souls would have googled and would have tried to gather information regarding this and try to figure out what this hype is all about..
Here is a Pictorial represntation of how effectively you can use yahoo pipes in your blog

1. Definition of Web-Feed
   Web feed is a Document that contains information regarding the content of the respective URL
2. What is the purpose of web-feed?
   With the number of websites/ blogs growing everyday.. its practically impossible to visit each one of them just to check if there is an update on your favourite story..so what the end-user (reader of the website) does is..He subscribes to the feed of the particular website/ blog
3. Real-Life Example of using Web-Feeds
   Most of us use our post feeds and comment feeds to display our RecentPosts(5) and RecentComments(5) in our sidebar.. For those who don’t know..
   POST FEED – http://YOUR_BLOG_NAME.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default?alt=rss
   CONTENT FEED – http://YOUR_BLOG_NAME.blogspot.com/feeds/comments/default?alt=rss
4. How does Subscribing help me?
   If there is an update.. you get an alert in your mailbox–If there is no update.. then you can rest in peace..and need not worry about missing the latest news
5. Web-feed…an XML document
   Web Feed as I said earlier are XML-documents. So they are developed to be read by machines (machine-readable) than by humans..(humanly-readable)By doing this.. when the feed is directly viewed in the browser ..Its only natural that you are not able to make head-or-tail out of it
6. How is Web-feed being read
   This is done with the help of applications like FeedBurner, FeedReader, GoogleReader etc…
   ie..once you subscribe to a feed ( or give the URL).. these applications ( machine-reads) reads the XML document( web-feed) and displays them in a more readable format (HTML document) in the browser
7. Feed Aggregation
   Making a collection of web feeds accessible in one spot is known as aggregation.
8. Yahoo Pipes – A Feed Aggregator
   Yahoo Pipes is a Web-Application by Yahoo… That allows the users to create their own aggregation of feeds without any sort of coding. Yahoo Pipes uses a Graphical-User-Interface allowing users to Drag-Drop controls

Source:- Wikipedia

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