The Rodeo

30 Days of writing: Day 12

This morning I added a few features to my RSS feed. In the interests of public knowledge (and so I don’t have to keep visiting pages to read comments), I now present a short article on implementing the commentRSS API within wordpress’ RSS 2 feed.

The commentRSS API allows feed aggregators to attach a comment feed to each item in the RSS feed, giving access to the comments on a post without having to visit the site to read them. Handy.

To start with, open up wp-rss2.php in a text editor and add the line starting wfw: in the <item> </item> node:

<item>
    <title>< ?php the_title_rss() ?></title>
    <wfw :commentRss>< ?php echo comments_rss(); ?></wfw>
    ...
</item>

Close your text editor because your RSS aggregator can now associate the appropriate comment feed with your all-purpose feed. Yep, that’s it. A single line.

You want to make it a bit fancier still?
OK, how about we add an image to the channel (so your aggregator can show a little picture of you above your posts) and a count of the comments to be included.

The image code is fairly straight-forward again, just add the <image></image> node under the <channel> </channel> node:

<channel>
    <title>< ?php bloginfo_rss('name'); ?></title>
    <image>
        <title>The Rodeo</title>
        <url>http://...(etc).../images/ussmall.png</url>
        <link>< ?php bloginfo_rss('url') ?></link>
    </image>
    ...
</channel>

This example assumes you want to label your image ‘The Rodeo’ and use a small picture of my wife and I as your image. Just change the title to suit and specify the URL to where your picture is located.

Once again, a fairly simple change. Adding the number of comments should round off the evening’s lesson nicely.
Firstly the following namespace needs to be defined in the<rss> </rss> node:

<rss version="2.0"
    xmlns:content="http://purl.org/rss/1.0/modules/content/"
    xmlns:wfw="http://wellformedweb.org/CommentAPI/"
    xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/"
    xmlns:slash="http://purl.org/rss/1.0/modules/slash/"
>
...
</rss>

Then add the slash:... line in the <item> </item> node:

<wfw:commentRss>< ?php echo comments_rss(); ?></wfw>
<slash:comments>< ?php echo get_comments_number( $id ); ?></slash:comments>

All finished.
Those few simple changes will make your wordpress RSS feed look a bit cooler in any aggregator that can handle those extensions.

Note: I realise this looks terrible, but I was having huge issues with getting the code to display at all - I’ll try and neaten it up at some point in the future.

-RodeoClown

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