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Giving out custom RSS from your Drupal Site

| (about a 3 minute )

Recently I ran into a problem where by I had to give out RSS of the Forum only from a DRUPAL 5 site, as the website was forum centered but it had blogs also. So when I first used the default rss.xml like (http://somesite.com/rss.xml) it gave out all the update not only the updated of the Forum that I wanted. I even tried another RSS source http://somesite.com/forum/rss.xml but it also had the same output. So problem is: giving out RSS of Forum only, how to do that?

Then I was suggested to use the views module, I said to myself views how will it do that? But I was not using the "Arguments" part of views there was the trick. Read the steps below if you want to do it yourself as well:
  1. Assumed you have views installed, login as the administrator (user1) or user with access to edit views.

  2. Goto Administer>>(under Site Buliding) Views>>Add

  3. In the new view configuration do something like below:

    1. Type the name of the view, I gave forum_rss, and specify access if you want to or give a description.
    2. In the page section choose something like below, give url it'll be yoursite.com/forum_rss.
    3. Skip the header, footer, empty text, menu and block sections.

    4. In the fields section add "Node Title" and "Node Body" if you want to add more its fully your choice, see below:

    5. The main step to get the RSS feed is here in the "Arguments" section, choose "RSS: RSS feed selector and click "Add Argument", then specify "Display all Values" and your feed's title as below.

    6. Use following filter in the filters section, I've used content type "Forum" and other needed filters.

    7. Select a sort criteria like below (new items first) then click save.

    8. Go to the new view page create and get your RSS feed's URL.

  4. The main trick lies in "Arguments" segment, when you add an argument choose "RSS: RSS Feed Selector" and display all values in default when it is added.

  5. Then see the view you have a RSS feed icon at the bottom of the page or
    you can get your custom RSS feed at http://somesite.com/page_view_url/feed.

What can it be used for only some possibilities:
  1. Giving out RSS of selective content type like blogs, forum or even you own CCK made content type.

  2. Giving out custom RSS of some vocabulary (tag) or any view customizable content like RSS of content tagged with Drupal.


There can be numerous possibilities with RSS of views. I got my problem solved hope you also benefit from it.

Geshan Manandhar

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