[[!template id=plugin name=aggregate author="[[Joey]]"]]
-[[!tag type/useful]]
+[[!tag type/special-purpose]]
-This plugin allows content from other feeds to be aggregated into the wiki.
-Aggregate a feed as follows:
+This plugin allows content from other feeds to be aggregated into the
+wiki. To specify feeds to aggregate, use the
+[[ikiwiki/directive/aggregate]] [[ikiwiki/directive]].
- \[[!aggregate name="example blog" dir="example"
- feedurl="http://example.com/index.rss"
- url="http://example.com/" updateinterval="15"]]
+## requirements
-That example aggregates posts from the specified RSS feed, updating no
-more frequently than once every 15 minutes, and puts a page per post under
-the example/ directory in the wiki.
+The [[meta]] and [[tag]] plugins are also recommended to be used with this
+one. Either the [[htmltidy]] or [[htmlbalance]] plugin is suggested, since
+feeds can easily contain html problems, some of which these plugins can fix.
-You can then use ikiwiki's [[ikiwiki/blog]] support to create a blog of one or
-more aggregated feeds. For example:
-
- \[[!inline pages="internal(example/*)"]]
-
-## setup
-
-New users of aggregate should enable the `aggregateinternal => 1` option in the
-.setup file. If you don't do so, you will need to enable the [[html]] plugin
-as well as aggregate itself, since feed entries will be stored as HTML.
-
-The [[meta]] and [[tag]] plugins are also recommended. The
-[[htmltidy]] plugin is suggested, since feeds can easily contain html
-problems, some of which tidy can fix.
+## triggering aggregation
You will need to run ikiwiki periodically from a cron job, passing it the
--aggregate parameter, to make it check for new posts. Here's an example
*/15 * * * * ikiwiki --setup my.wiki --aggregate --refresh
+The plugin updates a file `.ikiwiki/aggregatetime` with the unix time stamp
+when the next aggregation run could occur. (The file may be empty, if no
+aggregation is required.) This can be integrated into more complex cron
+jobs or systems to trigger aggregation only when needed.
+
Alternatively, you can allow `ikiwiki.cgi` to trigger the aggregation. You
should only need this if for some reason you cannot use cron, and instead
want to use a service such as [WebCron](http://webcron.org). To enable
can visit the url to trigger an aggregation run, but it will only check
each feed if its `updateinterval` has passed.
-## usage
-
-Here are descriptions of all the supported parameters to the `aggregate`
-directive:
-
-* `name` - A name for the feed. Each feed must have a unique name.
- Required.
-* `url` - The url to the web page for the feed that's being aggregated.
- Required.
-* `dir` - The directory in the wiki where pages should be saved. Optional,
- if not specified, the directory is based on the name of the feed.
-* `feedurl` - The url to the feed. Optional, if it's not specified ikiwiki
- will look for feeds on the `url`. RSS and atom feeds are supported.
-* `updateinterval` - How often to check for new posts, in minutes. Default
- is 15 minutes.
-* `expireage` - Expire old items from this feed if they are older than
- a specified number of days. Default is to never expire on age.
-* `expirecount` - Expire old items from this feed if there are more than
- the specified number total. Oldest items will be expired first. Default
- is to never expire on count.
-* `tag` - A tag to tag each post from the feed with. A good tag to use is
- the name of the feed. Can be repeated multiple times. The [[tag]] plugin
- must be enabled for this to work.
-* `template` - Template to use for creating the aggregated pages. Defaults to
- aggregatepost.
-
-Note that even if you are using subversion or another revision control
-system, pages created by aggregation will *not* be checked into revision
-control.
-
-## internal pages and `aggregateinternal`
+## aggregated pages
This plugin creates a page for each aggregated item.
If the `aggregateinternal` option is enabled in the setup file (which is
-recommended), aggregated pages are stored in the source directory with a
+the default), aggregated pages are stored in the source directory with a
"._aggregated" extension. These pages cannot be edited by web users, and
do not generate first-class wiki pages. They can still be inlined into a
blog, but you have to use `internal` in [[PageSpecs|IkiWiki/PageSpec]],
like `internal(blog/*)`.
-For backward compatibility, the default is that these pages have the
-".html" extension, and are first-class wiki pages -- each one generates
-a separate HTML page in the output, and they can even be edited.
-
-That turns out to not be ideal for aggregated content, because publishing
-files for each of those pages is a waste of disk space and CPU, and you
-probably don't want to allow them to be edited. So, there is an alternative
-method that can be used (and is recommended), turned on by the
-`aggregateinternal` option in the setup file.
-
-If you are already using aggregate and want to enable `aggregateinternal`,
-you should follow this process:
-
-1. Update all [[PageSpecs|ikiwiki/PageSpec]] that refer to the aggregated
- pages -- such as those in inlines. Put "internal()" around globs
- in those PageSpecs. For example, if the PageSpec was `foo/*`, it should
- be changed to `internal(foo/*)`. This has to be done because internal
- pages are not matched by regular globs.
-2. Use [[ikiwiki-transition]] to move all existing aggregated `.html`
- files. The command to run is `ikiwiki-transition aggregateinternal $srcdir`,
- or if you have changed the `htmlext` option to something other than "html",
- `ikiwiki-transition aggregateinternal $srcdir $htmlext`
-3. Turn on `aggregateinternal` in the setup file and rebuild the wiki.
+If `aggregateinternal` is disabled, you will need to enable the [[html]]
+plugin as well as aggregate itself, since feed entries will be stored as
+HTML, and as first-class wiki pages -- each one generates
+a separate HTML page in the output, and they can even be edited. This
+option is provided only for backwards compatability.