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RSS Image Feed 'feild'/embedded images question
Hello!
I need some technical support/guidance/advice about how to get Carousel to read UCSD News RSS feed images... If someone could at least tell me if it is possible or not, that would be helpful. The thing is they have images embedded in some format other than #ItemImageURL# and it is unclear to me whether or not there is a way I can write or rewrite the field to make it read the images. Here are two links, the first is the way they are currently doing it, the second is the way they are proposing to do it.
http://ucsdnews.ucsd.edu/rss/top_stor...
http://ucsdnews.ucsd.edu/rss/news_tes...
Your assistance would be greatly appreciated. I'd love to get this working as I think it would be the coolest thing ever for campus!
Thanks,
Megan
I need some technical support/guidance/advice about how to get Carousel to read UCSD News RSS feed images... If someone could at least tell me if it is possible or not, that would be helpful. The thing is they have images embedded in some format other than #ItemImageURL# and it is unclear to me whether or not there is a way I can write or rewrite the field to make it read the images. Here are two links, the first is the way they are currently doing it, the second is the way they are proposing to do it.
http://ucsdnews.ucsd.edu/rss/top_stor...
http://ucsdnews.ucsd.edu/rss/news_tes...
Your assistance would be greatly appreciated. I'd love to get this working as I think it would be the coolest thing ever for campus!
Thanks,
Megan
I’m wondering if there is a way.
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Hey Megan,
It's definitely possible to get feed images into the RSS bulletins in Carousel, but those particular feeds unfortunately aren't formatted in a way that allows Carousel to determine that there is an image present.
The feeds you linked to are actually just adding some html (including image html) into the <description /> element of the feed items. This is a somewhat common technique, as it makes it pretty easy to embed the feed content into a web page and have the image show up.
Carousel, however, can't render html. So, it treats the <description /> element as text, stripping out any "un-displayable" html, including the image's <img /> tag. And there go the pictures.
The way we find images in rss feeds is by looking for them as a distinct element inside of the feed item. A good example of this is Flickr's rss feeds. Here's a link to my photostream feed. If you view the source of this feed, you can see that they have a unique element called <media:content /> in each of the feed items. It looks like this:
<media:content url="http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3407/3550959559_b6f3f96472_o.jpg" type="image/jpeg" height="600" width="800" />
When Carousel sees that, it knows right away that this is an image, and can extract it and display it in the bulletin.
So, if you can convince whomever is in charge of the feeds to add images to the feed the same way that flickr does, you should be in business.
Does this help?
-John
The company and 1 other person say
this answers the question
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Inappropriate?Hey Megan,
It's definitely possible to get feed images into the RSS bulletins in Carousel, but those particular feeds unfortunately aren't formatted in a way that allows Carousel to determine that there is an image present.
The feeds you linked to are actually just adding some html (including image html) into the <description /> element of the feed items. This is a somewhat common technique, as it makes it pretty easy to embed the feed content into a web page and have the image show up.
Carousel, however, can't render html. So, it treats the <description /> element as text, stripping out any "un-displayable" html, including the image's <img /> tag. And there go the pictures.
The way we find images in rss feeds is by looking for them as a distinct element inside of the feed item. A good example of this is Flickr's rss feeds. Here's a link to my photostream feed. If you view the source of this feed, you can see that they have a unique element called <media:content /> in each of the feed items. It looks like this:
<media:content url="http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3407/3550959559_b6f3f96472_o.jpg" type="image/jpeg" height="600" width="800" />
When Carousel sees that, it knows right away that this is an image, and can extract it and display it in the bulletin.
So, if you can convince whomever is in charge of the feeds to add images to the feed the same way that flickr does, you should be in business.
Does this help?
-John
The company and 1 other person say
this answers the question
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Inappropriate?That is what I wanted to know, but of course, I was hoping it would be possible to read those images. I'm really hope I can get this going on campus. It would be so awesome! -
Inappropriate?Hey, Just wanted everyone to know that we got this working, and we can now distribute campus RSS feed with images to digital signs all over campus. AWESOME!
I’m thrilled.
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Inappropriate?I can't get this to work either. I've tried RSS feeds from several different websites, including aNASA's Image of the Day, and John's example. In both cases, Carousel displays the link to the photo, not the photo. -
Inappropriate?Tyler, I'm not sure what's wrong in your case, but be assured it does work. I've got the NASA image feed up and running. Plus others. Good luck.
I’m confident.
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