Updating the RSSHandler and vw_Search

by Phil 'iwonder' Guerra

--- (Mission, KS) - I've wanted a better DNN internally generated news feed for quite some time. I had so much work in my queue that updating the DNN core code was one project held back. For the most part, I left the project up to the Core Team, afterall it is core code.

Well, I'm not satisified with the progress, and the DNN CT certainly has their priorities, and I'm not going to criticize the lack of attention, but I'm moving forward with taking on the project. It's not a very easy set of tasks to undertake, though. There's a lot involved, due to the coupling of the RSS feed generation to the Search mechanism, but I was surprised at how relatively fast I could deploy an improved news feed with a few minor changes to the RSSHandler, and the vw_Search SQL view. The results yield a much more rich RSSv2.0 feed, giving your public feed branding and support for many of the standard RSSv2.0 tags, not all mind you, but enough to allow you to syndicate with the internal methods, rather than a custom approach.

There's a lot more to be done, as I've only been targeting one module to incorporate the changes, the Announcements module. The enhanced approach requires some tweaking of a module's support of RSS, which is seriously deficient in most modules. I don't understand why most module's even have the ability to syndicate without providing support for it. Oh, well, that's another story.

I'll post more about the effort and provide the code in another post. Right now, it's time to celebrate my son's 21st birthday.

Cheers