Last week I had to implement a customized RSS feed in Django for the first time. Sounded like a fun project to me until I had a look at the documentation which is… well let's just say it's not as good as the core documentation.
So if anybody runs into the same problems as me here is a simple example on how to do a little customizing of the Django syndication stuff:
:::python from django.contrib.syndication.feeds import Feed from django.utils.feedgenerator import Rss201rev2Feed from content.models import SomeModel
# this is our very own custom RSS feed generator class
class FooFeed(Rss201rev2Feed):
# add_root_elements adds xml elements to the root node of the RSS XML.
# In this case we add a 'foo' element to our feed root with a value of
# 'bar'.
def add_root_elements(self, handler):
super(FooFeed, self).add_root_elements(handler)
handler.addQuickElement(u'foo', 'bar')
# add_item_elements adds elements to the actual items in the RSS XML.
# In this case we add a 'foz' element with an attribute 'baz'. The values
# for those two keys are coming out of the passed in item dict.
def add_item_elements(self, handler, item):
super(FooFeed, self).add_item_elements(handler, item)
handler.addQuickElement(u'foz', item['foz'], attrs={'baz': item['baz']})
# this is our actual feed class that provides data for the RSS feed
class JobPostingFeed(Feed):
# this will use our custom RSS feed generator class from above
feed_type = FooFeed
title = 'FooFeed stuff'
link = '/'
description = 'Freaky FooFeed stuff.'
# this definies which objects are passed into the feed generator
def items(self):
return SomeModel.objects.order_by('-created_at')
# This took me the most time to figure out even though the idea is pretty
# simple. We used the item dictionary in add_item_elements above which is
# filled with the values we define here. Since we are accessing the keys
# 'foz' and 'baz' above we have to make sure those kyes/values actually
# exist in the 'item' dict.
def item_extra_kwargs(self, obj):
return {
'foz': obj.some_method(),
'baz': obj.some_attribute,
}
Update: Fixed add_item_elements. Thanks for pointing it out John.