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wistex 
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 Topic: Cannot Search for RSS, XML or other TLAs
Posted: 28 January 2006 at 7:59pm |
It is impossible to search of TLAs (three letter acronyms) on Web Wiz Forums 8.0 b2 alpha 1 (the version currently running on WWG).
I can understand why you limited the number of characters in a search, but you need to allow three character terms because there are way too many TLAs out there.
For example, it is impossible to search and find out if WWF is going to have RSS and XML support because you cannot search for those terms. And what about SQL. You can't find discussions related to MS SQL or SQL queries. You can't even search for version 8.0 because "8.0" is less than 4 characters.
Perhaps you need to limit the whole search box to be more than 3 characters, but not the individual search terms. And then require individual search terms to be at least 2 characters long. That may achieve your goal of preventing huge queries based on vague terms, while still allowing people to search for important TLAs such as "MS SQL" and "RSS Feeds" and "RSS XML" and "Version 8.0" and "WWF 8.0" and "RSS 8.0" and other similar terms.
Remember, just because a search term has few characters doesn't mean its vague. If I search for "RSS 8.0", I will most likely get very specific results about whether version 8.0 of WWF supports RSS or not.
And you could also filter out common words such as "a" and "the" and ignore those in the search, unless the person puts it in quotes or says they are searching for a phrase.
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WebWiz-Bruce
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Posted: 29 January 2006 at 12:48pm |
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I'm already working on this and have changed the limit to words under 3 characters for the next version (not yet complete for this site).
I'm also looking at removing common words like 'and' 'or', etc. from 'all word' searches.
I have almost finished re-writing every file for the new login and cookie-less tacking system, I've got a bit more testing to do, but I hope to test out all these new features on this site in the next week.
RSS feeds is something that I hope to do very soon, as soon as it is expect to see an 'RSS' button on the forum index page.
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wistex
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Posted: 29 January 2006 at 2:15pm |
Sounds great!  I already wrote a data-driven RSS Feed in ASP if you need the code. I even found code that converts the dates to the required RFC 822 date format. If you're interested, I could post it for you. You'd need to tweak it to work with your connection strings and tables, but it might save you some time if you haven't already researched it.
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WebWiz-Bruce
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Posted: 30 January 2006 at 1:34pm |
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I've not had time to look into RSS feeds yet, so I would be interested in such a file.
Also what format is the RFC 822 dates in?
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wistex
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Posted: 30 January 2006 at 7:21pm |
I tried editing the above post, but it gives an error when I press the Update Post button saying that I need to type something in the message box. It thinks nothing has been typed and won't allow me to submit the changes.
Also, there really needs to be a "Go Advanced" button on the Quick Reply area so that you can take what you already typed and go to the advanced editor. For example, I didn't realize that I needed bullets until I got down to the end. So I posted it and tried to edit it, but, it wouldn't let me.
I know I could have copied and pressed the post reply button and then pasted, but I thought the edit would have worked.
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wistex
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Posted: 30 January 2006 at 7:24pm |
Since I spend so much time editing it, here is the edited version that it wouldn't let me submit. You can delete the version above.
What is RFC 822:
RFC 822 refers to the standard that governs the format that e-mails are required to be sent in. Dates in the e-mail header are required to be formatted in a certain way.
The people who wrote the standards for RSS opted to refer to the RFC 822 standard for the format of the date instead of specifically defining the date format required themselves.
In summary, if you want your RSS Feed to validate, your dates must be in RFC 822 format.
RSS Feed Resources:
I used the following script (modified, of course) to create the RSS feed.
This was a good starting point to build on. I had to change the connection and query since I was using MS SQL and not Access, and then I had to add the fields for the dates.
Only one problem: the script above does not put the dates in it! And they are required to be in a certain format.
So I looked around the net and found a function that converts a date in ASP to RFC 822 format. I used it in my script and it worked well without me having to modify a thing.
Then I wanted to get more creative and add more fields.
If found a great website that explains all the tags:
and used that to add the fields I wanted to the RSS feed that weren't included in the original script I used as a base.
With those three resources, copying & pasting my existing connection string from other working code, and defining an appropriate query, I was able to make a working RSS feed.
The above feed was generated using the code I made.
Also, you will need to validate your feed:
Additional Features:
Since the feed it data driven, some enhancements that I plan on adding are:
- Being able to pass variables to it in the URL to define what content is delivered in the feed. That way I can use one script to generate all the feeds on the site. Specifying no arguments will result in the default feed being served.
- Logging accesses to the script so I can get a good idea of how often it is used. I know this won't give me detailed stats, but it would be nice to know at least some basic info about what readers and services are accessing it. This may not be worth it, but I'd figure I'd try it.
Another thing that this is missing that would be required for very busy sites is caching. It would be nice if it cached the feeds as an XML file so that a database query wouldn't be needed every time someone accesses the RSS feed. I haven't found a good sample script that does that though.
In Closing:
I hope that helps. I could still give you the exact code I used, but since you would have to hack it yourself to get it to do what you want, I thought it would be better to give you the actual resources and sample code I used. If you still want my code, I can provide it as well.
P.S. It took me many months to gather all the information required to make an RSS feed. (A lot of the information out there wasn't useful or inthe wrong scripting language.) So don't lose this. 
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wistex
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Posted: 30 January 2006 at 7:33pm |
Also, little sticking point I forgot to mention. Make sure that all "&" are converted to "&" even in titles, descriptions, etc. The RSS feed will choke if you have an "&" in there.
Of course, since you are already programming in XHTML, you are probably aware of that. But for those of you who aren't, you need to either make sure that there are no & in your data or (better) convert & to &.
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dpyers
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Posted: 30 January 2006 at 10:13pm |
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Nice post wistex. Bookmarking this one.
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Lead me not into temptation... I know the short cut, follow me.
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