phil ringnalda

Since there seems to be a bit of buzz about RSS feeds of comments today (even though it’s so last January), I thought I’d throw together an RSS 1.0 comment feed template to go with my (well, mostly Bill Kearney’s) RSS 0.91 template. Along the way, I added a plugin, since you can’t get at the entry title or the entry archive link while in MTComments context but an RSS item title of “michel v comments on Parabola’s daughter” is so much more useful than “michel v comments” or “A comment on 2318”.

We’ll need a bit more room to keep the <pre> from breaking the page, so let’s move to the extended entry, shall we?

First, the plugin: download CommentEntryTags.zip, unzip it, and put CommentEntryTags.pl in your MovableType plugins directory. That lets you use <$MTCommentEntryTitle$> inside <MTComments> to retrieve the title of the entry for the comment. It also adds <$MTCommentEntryLink$>, which returns the archive link for the entry. If you have individual entry archives with the comments displayed inline, then you just need to add comment permalinks to the individual entry template (add <a name=”<$MTCommentID pad=”1″$>”></a> just above <$MTCommentBody$>, and if you want to turn the date posted into a permalink like an entry permalink, use something like <a href=”<$MTCommentEntryLink$>#<$MTCommentID pad=”1″$>” title=”permalink for this comment”><$MTCommentDate$></a>), and then <$MTCommentEntryLink$>#<$MTCommentID pad=”1″$> will produce an RSS item link that points directly to the comment. Not using individual entry archives? Why not?

Then, the template:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="iso-8859-1" ?>
<rdf:RDF xmlns:rdf="http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#"
    xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/"
    xmlns:admin="http://webns.net/mvcb/"
    xmlns="http://purl.org/rss/1.0/">
    <channel rdf:about="<$MTBlogURL$>">
        <title><$MTBlogName encode_xml="1"$> - recent comments</title>
        <link><$MTBlogURL$></link>
        <description><$MTBlogDescription encode_xml="1"$></description>
        <dc:language>en-us</dc:language>
        <dc:date><$MTDate format="%Y-%m-%dT%H:%M:%S"$><$MTBlogTimezone$></dc:date>
        <admin:generatorAgent rdf:resource="http://www.movabletype.org/?v=<$MTVersion$>" />
        <items>
            <rdf:Seq><MTComments lastn="15">
                <rdf:li rdf:resource="<$MTCommentEntryLink$>#<$MTCommentID pad="1"$>" />
            </MTComments></rdf:Seq>
        </items>
    </channel>
    <MTComments lastn="15">
    <item rdf:about="<$MTBlogArchiveURL$><$MTCommentEntryID pad="1"$>.php#<$MTCommentID pad="1"$>">
        <title><$MTCommentAuthor$> comments on <$MTCommentEntryTitle$></title>
        <description><$MTCommentBody encode_xml="1"$></description>
        <link><$MTCommentEntryLink$>#<$MTCommentID pad="1"$></link>
        <dc:contributor><$MTCommentAuthor$></dc:contributor>
        <dc:date><$MTCommentDate format="%Y-%m-%dT%H:%M:%S"$><$MTBlogTimezone$></dc:date>
    </item>
    </MTComments>
</rdf:RDF>

Let me know if it doesn’t work for you (or if it does, of course), in MT or an aggregator or as RDF: it works for me, in my aggregators and my RDF parser seems to give the right triples, but that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s right.