Re: RSS renderer

[Kevin Godby <godbyk yahoo com>]

Hello.

On Wed, 2004-02-25 at 01:11 -0500, Nat Friedman wrote:
> I like that you display some text for the top entry.  That's clever.  I
> don't see any reason to indent the entries, that just wastes space.  I
> also don't see a need for the bullets.  I'd reduce the amount of text
> you show from the first entry to two or maybe three lines.  I'd change
> the text from "nat friedman (RSS feed)" to "weblog: nat friedman".

The renderer will display text for the top entry and any entries
published today.

I removed the indentation and the bullets.  I had originally used these
so that all the titles wouldn't run together in a blur of blue text.  To
compensate for this, I used your trick of highlighting every other row
with a light grey background.

Also, the original version of the renderer displayed the first sentence
of the entry (well, up to the first period, at least).  Instead, it now
displays the first few words of the entry.  See if you like it better.  

I can't display a certain number of lines, because it there are too many
variables that I don't control: word sizes, word wrap, font size, screen
resolution, etc.  So anything I do to limit the display is going to be a
hack.  Implementation ideas welcome!

-- 
Kevin Godby <godbyk yahoo com>

Attachment: rss-renderer.png
Description: PNG image

//
// GNOME Dashboard
//
// RSSMatchRenderer.cs: Knows how to render RSS matches.
//
// Author:
//   Kevin Godby <godbyk yahoo com>
//

using System;
using System.Collections;
using System.Xml;
using System.IO;

namespace Dashboard {

	class RSSMatchRenderer : MatchRenderer {

		public int MaxEntries = -1;	// The max number of entries to show (per feed)
		public int MatchNumber = 0;	// This is used later on..

		public override void Startup ()
		{
			Type = "RSS";
		}

		public override string HTMLRenderMatches (ArrayList matches)
		{
			DateTime StartExec = DateTime.Now;

			StringWriter sw = new StringWriter ();
			XmlWriter xw = new XmlTextWriter (sw);

			xw.WriteStartElement ("div");	// Start the rss results block
			// xw.WriteElementString ("u", "RSS Feed");	// Print the title
			// xw.WriteStartElement ("br");
			// xw.WriteEndElement ();	// br

			ArrayList Titles = new ArrayList ();
	
			// Get all the unique rss feed titles
			foreach (Match m in matches) {
				string Title = Convert.ToString (m ["Title"]);

				if (!Titles.Contains (Title))
					Titles.Add (Title);
			}

			// Let's display some output already!
			foreach (string title in Titles)
				HTMLRenderSingleRSSTitle (title, matches, xw);

			xw.WriteEndElement ();	// End rss results block

			xw.Close ();

			Console.WriteLine ("..Renderer: RSS.. elapsed time {0}", DateTime.Now - StartExec);

			return sw.ToString ();
		}

		private void HTMLRenderSingleRSSTitle (string Title, ArrayList matches, XmlWriter xw)
		{
			string Icon = "internal:rss.png";

			// xw.WriteStartElement ("img");	// rss icon
			// xw.WriteAttributeString ("src", Icon);

			xw.WriteStartElement ("font");	// Make the font smaller to fit window width
			xw.WriteAttributeString ("size", "+0");

			xw.WriteElementString ("u", " Weblog: " + Title);
			xw.WriteStartElement ("br");
			xw.WriteEndElement ();	// br

			xw.WriteStartElement ("table");
			xw.WriteAttributeString ("border", "0");
			xw.WriteAttributeString ("cellpadding", "0");
			xw.WriteAttributeString ("cellspacing", "0");

			MatchNumber = 0;
			int NumEntries = 0;
			bool color_band = true;
			foreach (Match m in matches) {
				NumEntries++;
				if ((NumEntries <= MaxEntries) || (MaxEntries == 0) || (MaxEntries == -1))
					HTMLRenderSingleRSSItem (m, xw, color_band);
				color_band = ! color_band;
			}

			xw.WriteEndElement ();	// table

			xw.WriteEndElement ();	// font

		}

		private void HTMLRenderSingleRSSItem (Match m, XmlWriter xw, bool color_band)
		{
			string Title       = Convert.ToString (m ["Title"]);
			string Description = Convert.ToString (m ["Description"]);
			string ItemTitle   = Convert.ToString (m ["ItemTitle"]);
			string Weblink     = Convert.ToString (m ["Weblink"]);
			string GUID        = Convert.ToString (m ["GUID"]);
			DateTime PubDate   = DateTime.Parse (Convert.ToString (m ["PubDate"]));
			string Icon        = "internal:rss.png";

			// Console.WriteLine ("..Renderer: RSS.. PubDate = {0}", PubDate);

			// Grab first sentence from Description
			string BareDescription = StripHTML (Description);
			string Sentence = BareDescription.Substring (0, BareDescription.IndexOf (".") + 1) + " . .";

			// Grab first few words...
			string [] words = BareDescription.Split (' ');
			string Blurb = String.Join (" ", words, 0, 20);
			Sentence = Blurb + " . . .";

			xw.WriteStartElement ("tr");
			xw.WriteStartElement ("td");
			if (color_band)
				xw.WriteAttributeString ("bgcolor", "#f6f2f6");

			// xw.WriteString ("- ");
			xw.WriteStartElement ("a");
			xw.WriteAttributeString ("href", Weblink);
			xw.WriteAttributeString ("style", "text-decoration: none;");
			xw.WriteString (ItemTitle);
			xw.WriteEndElement ();	// a href

			// If it's an entry from today, or the most recent entry show a short intro
			if ((PubDate == DateTime.Today) || (MatchNumber == 0)) {
				xw.WriteStartElement ("br");
				xw.WriteEndElement ();	// br

				xw.WriteStartElement ("font");
				xw.WriteAttributeString ("size", "-1");
				xw.WriteAttributeString ("color", "#666666");
				xw.WriteRaw (Sentence);
				xw.WriteEndElement ();	// font
			}

			// xw.WriteStartElement ("br");
			// xw.WriteEndElement ();	// br

			xw.WriteEndElement ();	// td
			xw.WriteEndElement ();	// tr

			MatchNumber++;
		}

		private string StripHTML (string myhtml) {
			// I'm sure there's a better regex or builtin function for this..
			System.Text.RegularExpressions.Regex tags = new System.Text.RegularExpressions.Regex(@"<[^>]+>|</[^>]+>");
			return tags.Replace(myhtml, "");
		}
	}
}