Added support for conditional GET

Added support for conditional GET ("If-Modified-Since" header) when requesting source web pages and when serving RSS feeds.

Does anyone know RSS Aggregators that support all that "If-Modified-Since", "If-None-Match" HTTP stuff to test on?

Bugfixes, improvements

• Feed43 now supports gzip encoding for served webpages and when requesting data from web sites. This will increase the processing speed up to 3..5 times. Gzip encoding is also enabled by default for HTTP/1.1 requests. If your feed reader software can't handle feeds from Feed43, tell us.
• Feed43 now correctly expands URLs inside HTML code using the effective URL (the final URL after redirections, if any, from where the HTML content has been received). If any redirections occur, you will see the effective URL in status line upon hitting [Reload] button.
• A limit of 200'000 bytes has been set for source HTML pages, because processing of huge documents would lessen overall server performance noticeably. If a source web page exceeds this limit, first 200'000 bytes will be loaded.
• Requesting documents from some servers would give a false '500 read timeout' error — fixed.
• Fixed a bug when ( ) brackets would render search pattern invalid.

Bugfixes

• Fixed a bug when   and similar entities in search patterns would be screwed up when opening feed edit form next time.
• Improved syntax highlighting and html whitespace handling.
• Minor improvements in context help.

Bugfixes, improvements

1. Empty {%N} parameters would screw up the feed rendering — fixed.
2. As many of you requested, Global Pattern and Item Pattern fields are now also resizeable.
3. Relative paths in Feed Link and Item Link are now automatically expanded against base URL of the source web page.

A nice tutorial on Feed43 search patterns

Here is a good tutorial on how to setup feeds, from one of our users.
http://mgroves.com/blog_archive.php?blogID=164

Digg this article

Getting weather from weather.com as a news feed

1. Go to weather.com, search for your city from the Local Weather search pane, then select your city from list of matches. You will see the following page (this is an example for Washington, DC):
   
   
   
   And the URL of this page will be something like that:
   http://www.weather.com/weather/local/USDC0001?from=search_city (text marked with red will differ for you location).
2. Create a new feed on Feed43 web site.
3. In Address field set the following URL: http://www.weather.com/weather/local/USDC0001?from=search_city.
4. Press [Reload] button.
5. Set the following Item Search Pattern:
   Right Now for{*}On The Spot Weather{*}<TD VALIGN="TOP" colspan="2">{%}<TD COLSPAN="2" ALIGN="LEFT">
6. Press [Extract] button to see it works (one text snippet will be extracted).
7. Set 'Local Weather Forecast for Washington, DC - weather.com' as a Feed Title.
8. Set 'Local Weather Forecast for Washington, DC - weather.com' as a Feed Description.
9. Set 'Local Weather Forecast for Washington, DC - weather.com' as Item Title Template.
10. Set {%1}</td></tr></table> as Item Content Template.
11. Press [Preview] button to see your feed.
12. Rename feed to something like 'weather-com-washington-dc'.
13. Don't forget to password-protect your feed so no one could alter it.
14. Now you can point your aggregator to http://feed43.com/weather-com-washington-dc.xml and see the the feed with single item that will look like that:
    
    
    

Quick tutorial on translating search results from Technorati as a news feed

1. Create a new feed on Feed43 web site.
2. In Address field set the following URL: http://technorati.com/search/test?mini=1 (replace test with actual search term you need).
3. Press [Reload] button.
4. Set the following Item Search Pattern:
   <h3>{*}href="{%}"{*}>{%}</a>{*}<blockquote{*}<a{*}>{%}</a></p>
5. Press [Extract] button to see it works.
6. Set 'Technorati Search / test' as a Feed Title.
7. Set 'Technorati Search / test' as a Feed Description.
8. Set {%2} as Item Title Template.
9. Set {%1} as Item Link Template.
10. Set {%3} as Item Content Template.
11. Press [Preview] button to see your feed.
12. Rename feed to something like 'technorati-search-test'.
13. Don't forget to password-protect your feed so no one could alter it.
14. Now you can point your aggregator to http://feed43.com/technorati-search-test.xml and enjoy your life.

We're up and running

Announcement: Feed43 service is now available for private beta testing. If you want to become a beta-tester, drop us a note.

What is Feed43?
Feed43 (pronounced as "Feed For Free") is an online service, a proxy between your news reader application and third-party web sites that don't support RSS natively. It allows you to create your own news feeds in RSS format for any web site, that is to monitor any web site from within news reader.

Check our site feed43.com for in-depth description of the service and for tutorial on how to create feeds.