protected friends RSS aggregator

[c3w]

Announcing v1 of LJFriendFeeder [source]

Aggregates your Friends protected entries as an RSS feed

Uses pass-through HTTP Auth for moderate security

Displays User Pics and Lock/Protected icons

Uses Public LJ StyleID 665688

You can run it directly, or copy the source to your own server. Only requirement is PHP w/ Curl compile-time option.

Have fun!--

Comments

[jeffreyatw]

Quite excited about this, but it doesn't seem to work. Upon entering my username/password to your server (I trust you), I got:

[LiveJournal.com: Bad username, styleid, or style definition]

I'm trying to clear cache/cookies so I can try re-entering my user/pass, but it doesn't seem to be working...

[c3w]

Hmm.. yeah this URL needs to work:

http://www.livejournal.com/customview.cgi?user=jeffreyatw&styleid=665688&checkcookies=1

I was getting the same error as you with other peoples styleids, which is why I wrote my own, and made it public/embedded. I know it works for some people - still looking into this.

since my script just passes along any user/pass you enter, the worst that happens is that you get a feed of only your friend's public entries. also, you can append ?logout and hit ESC to clear your http auth.

Hum..

aha; thanks LJ support

[c3w]

To use my rss style, you need to set it as 'trusted' for your particular user.

Go to: http://www.livejournal.com/admin/console/ and enter this command: "set trusted_s1 665688" (note that's a (one), not an L)

Re: aha; thanks LJ support

[jeffreyatw]

Great, it works!

Now I was reading your source and you said not to use online feed readers like Yahoo or Google's. So you're sure there's no way to add this feed to Google Reader without it going public?

Also, is it such a big deal about adding it to Google Reader if it requires a username/password to use?

[dwizzy]

isn't a premium/advertised account a requirement as well?

[xb95]

Or you could use:

http://c3w.livejournal.com/data/rss?auth=digest

That's supported in just about every feed reader out there - it will realize that the content is protected, prompt for a username and password, and then LJ will consider you 'logged in' for fetching...

[c3w]

LJ's own rss cgi is for reading your own protected entries, while LJFriendFeeder reads your friends protected entries. I've submitted a feature request to LJ, but do not have a timeline on implementation.

So.. LJFriendFeeder lives;)

[xb95]

Woah woah woah.

I work for LJ. We are not planning to implement that. We do not want to see one user syndicating everybody else's content under their name/path/etc. I am one of the people that do not want to see my content get syndicated out anywhere except through my journal.

This is really playing with fire...

[c3w]

i totally agree.. i'm hoping people heed my warnings and use this in a very controlled environment..

an idea:
a 2nd LJ user password that's restricted to view only poster/subject/link. when a user syndicates, they use this limited password to get the links, and must be logged in with their primary password to read the actual content in their local browser.

[iamrobertsworry]

What I really want is it all to goto an IMAP account so I can track what I've read.

[jissa]

Ohhh, this is nifty! Thanks for the post-age!