Get an RSS Feed From a Widget

You can return an RSS feed from any of your widgets, just by using load=RSS as a query parameter. Simply take the URL from your widget embed code:

<script 
src="http://nmp.newsgator.com/NGBuzz/Buzz.ashx?buzzId=142970
&apiToken=504035ED85FA4B55A4244AE2E65C0C64" type="text/javascript" 
language="javascript"></script>

And tack on that parameter, so you'll have a URL that looks like this: http://nmp.newsgator.com/NGBuzz/Buzz.ashx?buzzId=142970 &apiToken=504035ED85FA4B55A4244AE2E65C0C64&load=RSS

This will give you an RSS feed that shows all of the results going into that widget. Here's a neat use-case that came up a couple weeks ago:

Suppose you'd like a widget to contain BOTH regular RSS feeds AND search content. For example, say I want to create a sky diving widget, but I can only find a few resources that post regular content. I can create a search widget that will look for all articles related to "sky diving", then use the load=RSS parameter to create a feed from it. I can then use this feed along with other feed URLs specified in the "Your Content" tab for my sky diving widget. This is by far the simplest way to include a broader range of content in your widgets.

A few things to note:
* The "Manage Articles" utility for widgets will come in handy as far as maintaining the integrity of the content shown in your search widgets, especially if you are searching all NewsGator content.
* Search widgets can be a good way to find resources that you didn't know about before: blogs and other websites can crop up in a search that you could use as regular content.

Comments

[Josh]

Helpful article!