Ask PG: Link to comments in RSS

Posted by hugov on Saturday February 09, 2008 @07:49AM
from the self-post dept.

Like many of you, I read Hacker News through an RSS reader. The Hacker News RSS only has title links, no preview or link to the comments page (unless the item has no URL, like this one). To go to the comments page, you have to navigate to news.ycombinator.com, find the item you want, and click on comments. PG: can you please add a link to the comments page from the body of each RSS item. Thanks!

( 22 comments | 18 points | on HN )

Re:Ask PG: Link to comments in RSS by pg on Saturday February 09, 2008 @12:31PM (#112730)

There are comment links in the rss feed. Some readers show them and some don't. If anyone can give me the exact syntax that would work in the latter, I'll try it.

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Re:Ask PG: Link to comments in RSS by brett on Saturday February 09, 2008 @03:06PM (#112778)

  <item>
    <title>Ask PG: Link to comments in RSS</title>
    <link>http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=112684</link>
    <comments>http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=112684</comments>
    <description>
      &lt;a href="http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=112684"&gt;comments&lt;/a&gt;
    </description>
  </item>

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Re:Ask PG: Link to comments in RSS by bd on Saturday February 09, 2008 @08:28PM (#112850)

Or like this:

  <item>
    <title>Ask PG: Link to comments in RSS</title>
    <link>http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=112684</link>  
    <description><![CDATA[<a href="http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=112684">Comments</a>]]></description>
  </item>

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Re:Ask PG: Link to comments in RSS by pg on Saturday February 09, 2008 @09:56PM (#112866)

Ok, does it work now? Here's what I'm doing:

  (def rss-stories (stories)
    (tag (rss version "2.0")
      (tag channel
        (tag title (pr this-site*))
        (tag link (pr site-url*))
        (tag description (pr site-desc*))
        (each s stories
          (tag item
            (let comurl (+ site-url* (item-url s))
              (tag title    (pr (eschtml (s 'title))))
              (tag link     (pr (if (blank (s 'url))
                                    comurl
                                    (eschtml (s 'url)))))
              (tag comments (pr comurl))
              (tag description
                (pr "<![CDATA[")
                (link "Comments" comurl)
                (pr "]]>"))))))))

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Re:Ask PG: Link to comments in RSS by bd on Sunday February 10, 2008 @01:37AM (#112923)

Bloglines now shows the link twice, one from <comments> and one from <description>.

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Re:Ask PG: Link to comments in RSS by pg on Sunday February 10, 2008 @02:01AM (#112926)

Argh. Can anyone tell me a format that will work on all readers? Is the answer to ditch the comments field?

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Re:Ask PG: Link to comments in RSS by ks on Sunday February 10, 2008 @06:12AM (#112965)

I also see them twice, but it doesn't bother me. Just leave it as it is.

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Re:Ask PG: Link to comments in RSS by hugov on Friday February 22, 2008 @06:12AM (#121199)

On 20/2 at around 8:15 pm GMT, the comments link disappeared again for me (in Vienna). What's going on?

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Re:Ask PG: Link to comments in RSS by Cald on Saturday February 09, 2008 @11:51PM (#112898)

It works in Google Reader!

Thanks!

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Re:Ask PG: Link to comments in RSS by dizz on Sunday February 10, 2008 @05:35AM (#112957)

Yep - another confirm - comment linked working in google reader now - thanks!

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Re:Ask PG: Link to comments in RSS by hugov on Sunday February 10, 2008 @08:01PM (#113159)

Thanks PG - confirm everything appears to be completely working now!

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Re:Ask PG: Link to comments in RSS by pestilence on Saturday February 09, 2008 @10:08PM (#112869)

It's working in akregator now (wasn't working before).

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Re:Ask PG: Link to comments in RSS by rob on Saturday February 09, 2008 @09:18AM (#112696)

I brought this up a while ago here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35363

I was using Google Reader, and there was no comments link, but have since switched to NetNewsWire (OS X) where everything works correctly. It doesn't look like it'll change.

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Re:Ask PG: Link to comments in RSS by silencio on Saturday February 09, 2008 @06:58PM (#112833)

That's really odd. NNW for me doesn't show links, and never has...hmm, too bad it doesn't keep track of when I subscribe to feeds, but I'm fairly sure that's how it's always been for me.

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Re:Ask PG: Link to comments in RSS by rob on Sunday February 10, 2008 @09:49AM (#113000)

Hmm, actually it might depend on the theme you're using. I'm using the Ollicle Reflex theme (http://www.ollicle.com/2006/nov/28/jquery_netnewswire_style....) and it displays the comments link neatly in the right column.

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Re:Ask PG: Link to comments in RSS by BvS on Saturday February 09, 2008 @10:24AM (#112707)

A while ago someone (sorry, forget the name) created an alternative feed which shows a link to the comment page: http://harumi.ath.cx/newsyc

Works fine with Google-Reader.

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Re:Ask PG: Link to comments in RSS by hugov on Saturday February 09, 2008 @09:53AM (#112704)

I'm using Vienna (OS X) which as far as I can tell works perfectly for every one of the other 200+ feeds I subscribe to - but not for Hacker News. It looks like simply replacing the <comments> tag with a description tag containing (only) a hyperlink to the comments page would fix the problem. Many readers ignore the <comments> tag.

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Re:Ask PG: Link to comments in RSS by altano on Saturday February 09, 2008 @10:49PM (#112886)

Whatever's up now is working with Vienna. I see a comments link.

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Re:Ask PG: Link to comments in RSS by ks on Saturday February 09, 2008 @08:26AM (#112687)

I see links to comment pages for all items, so perhaps it's your RSS reader?

But it would be nice to see the submission text.

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Re:Ask PG: Link to comments in RSS by yrashk on Saturday February 09, 2008 @11:48AM (#112720)

NetNewsWire shows link to comments

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Re:Ask PG: Link to comments in RSS by AxiomShell on Saturday February 09, 2008 @09:15AM (#112694)

I don't see links as well. I'm using Google Reader.

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Re:Ask PG: Link to comments in RSS by dizz on Saturday February 09, 2008 @08:47AM (#112690)

+1 :-) I don't see links to comment pages for all items... using google reader

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