CL RSS Feed Aggregator

Thanks for the recent postings for CL ads for kayaks.  I'm working on an application to aggregate CL feeds for all the WA and OR CL's.  Using just "sit on top kayaks" culls the list to a reasonable level, but still picks up some junk and misses other valid posts.  I'm sure there is a more complicated search string to get better results.  Anyone out there using one that works well for them?  I may have to iterate via trial and error to get it right.  I hope to have the app up within a week.

-Allen

huh? ..    

no worries, i don't know anything about that stuff. I do know the search on CL is a bit quirky. You can't search the whole state or the whole CL site on a single search

Thanks Allen,
I might be the only one here that understands/appreciates RSS feed aggregators.  For those that don't, RSS feeds and feed aggregators can help you monitor forums and news items as well as keep track of things like searches on craigslist or ebay.  When Allen get's the craigslist aggregator setup on this site it should create an up to date list of all the search results for sit on top kayaks from the Washington and Oregon CL sites right here on the NWKA site.  Think of it this way, it will replace our own CoosBayYaker in weeding through the various craigslists and posting them here.

Another use for RSS feeds is that you can use them in conjunction with something like a personalized Google home page (see an image of mine below below).

Speaking of RSS feeds, the AOTY app has two of them; one for the overall leaderboard and one for the ten most recent catches.  Of course with nothing posted yet they don't do much right now.

leaderboard RSS
http://aoty.northwestkayakanglers.com/leaderboard/rss

recent catches RSS
http://aoty.northwestkayakanglers.com/catch/rss

and of course the most recent NWKA forum posts have an rss feed as well
http://www.northwestkayakanglers.com/index.php?type=rss;action=.xml

Brian

huh? ..    

no worries, i don't know anything about that stuff. I do know the search on CL is a bit quirky. You can't search the whole state or the whole CL site on a single search

Yup, that's right, larger scale searches are not possible at CL itself.  You can use RSS feeds to put together a larger search which I'll try to do here.  Or you can use something like http://www.craigshelper.com/ which they claim doesn't violate Craigslist search policies.

BTW, there is a mechanism that uses RSS in conjunction with a posting bot to put RSS entires as posts on a forum here.  I tried it yesterday for a bit, but felt the number of posts could get out of hand and clutter things up, so I pulled the plug on it.  I may still revert to that if I can modify the software to not include these posts in the "show recent" or "show unread" utilities.

-Allen

OK ... check it out.

http://www.northwestkayakanglers.com/index.php?page=15

Thanks to PapaBill from NCKA who already had something like this up and running at NCKA.

Currently I have the search phrase set to "sit on top kayak".  I'll fiddle around with that some to make it more robust.  Suggestions welcome.

Also, there is an option to enable Ebay RSS feeds, something I'll also fiddle around with.

-Allen

Nice Allen...

But what is "coosbayyaker" going to do with his spare time now?

Brian

Nice Allen...

But what is "coosbayyaker" going to do with his spare time now?

Brian

Get out fishing of course!!!

-Allen

Oh what fun with Craigslist.  I guess they don't have advanced searching using logic AND, OR, or NOT functions.  So to do more advanced searches I need to do individual searches of various terms.  Still no easy way to use NOT to exclude items.

That is unless I'm missing something and anyone has any suggestions ...

-Allen

Oh what fun with Craigslist.  I guess they don't have advanced searching using logic AND, OR, or NOT functions.  So to do more advanced searches I need to do individual searches of various terms.  Still no easy way to use NOT to exclude items.

That is unless I'm missing something and anyone has any suggestions ...

-Allen

Huh? ...

Well, since i don't have to keep up with CL anymore, I'll have to go out to Eel lake tomorrow and rack up a steelie for the AOTY.

Go get 'em CBY. Don't forget the camera and measuring device!

Z

Nice Allen...

But what is "coosbayyaker" going to do with his spare time now?

Brian

I could complain about there not being a link to it.... . Sticky it with a link in the classified section?

Nice Allen...

But what is "coosbayyaker" going to do with his spare time now?

Brian

I could complain about there not being a link to it.... . Sticky it with a link in the classified section?

Your wish is my command.  It is done.

-Allen

Now thats service. Thank you, our flealess leader...

I broked out the searches to smaller separate searches.

http://www.northwestkayakanglers.com/index.php/topic,868.msg5856.html#msg5856

-Allen

Allen,

Do you know if your RSS aggregator creates an aggregated RSS feed that it then formats, or does it simply format the various rss feeds directly as they come in?   Why am I asking?  Well, if you can figure out the aggregated RSS feeds from each search, then you should be able to create a super aggreator to aggregate all your searches.

Brian