Pony request: comment feed

[katzenfabrik]

Does anyone know if it's possible to get a feed of a given user's comments (or just your own) in Dreamwidth?

Context: I want to comment here more, which means I would like to set up a Beeminder goal for doing so, and those work a lot better if they're automatic (i.e. I want to connect the feed of my comments, on anyone's journal, to Beeminder so that it adds a datapoint to the goal whenever I write a comment). I don't mind using IFTTT to do the connecting. I can also see valid and obvious privacy reasons why this wouldn't be available, but maybe it does?

Disclaimer: using external tools to make me communicate more with humans might feel weird and artificial, but -- *handwaves in ADHD* -- that's how my brain works. Sometimes. When it does.

Comments

[jack]

I'm not hopeful, it sounds like the sort of thing that would be nice, but that support for tracking comments and RSS feed variants have often not had enough developers, but there are people connected to dreamwidth development who would likely know more precisely.

There are various options for email notifications, I'm not sure if there might be one for "when I comment on a post"?

I wonder if a google search for "katzenfabrik site:dreamwidth.org" would work as a proxy for number of posts

[kaberett]

Yeah, there isn't currently (and is unlikely to be, I think, though I've just asked about technical barriers to it) an RSS feed of comments; HOWEVER there IS a Recent Comments page, which by default shows comments recently received in your journal/on your community posts, and you can also choose to see only your own recently posted comments. If you have a paid account, more comments appear here.

I regret that this isn't as automated asyou want it to be!

[katzenfabrik]

Thanks both, especially kaberett for asking about technical limitations! I think I should be able to bodge something together with this. Will update here if I manage it. :)

[kaberett]

RIGHT, yes, technical limitations are that turning the Latest Comments Posted page into an RSS feed is really easy... but authenticating for it (are you allowed to see this?) in a way that's secure is Really Not.

[katzenfabrik]

Oh yes, that makes sense!

[alexwlchan]

So with the disclaimer that this code is badly documented and only intended for my use, this is a script I use to pipe my reading page entries into an RSS feed:

https://github.com/alexwlchan/junkdrawer/tree/master/dreamwidth_rss

In particular, you may want to nick my auth code.

The feed is published to an obscure URL on my web server, protected by HTTP Basic Auth, then plumbed into my email account via Blogtrottr. It only includes titles, authors and tags (similar to the post notification emails) – you have to click through to Dreamwidth proper for the post content. The script runs on a machine which is logged in to DW in my web browser; if that machine is rooted I’m completely hosed already.

I wonder if creating a feed whose only entry text is “I made a comment at $time“ would be sufficient? Beeminder can count it but you're not leaking anything.

[katzenfabrik]

Thanks so much for sharing your code! I haven't had time yet to play with it, but I probably will over the holidays.

[katzenfabrik]

(Actually, I just ran it quickly while waiting for a long process at work, and made a tiny pull request with a couple of changes that made it work better for me: https://github.com/alexwlchan/junkdrawer/pull/10. Hope that's okay!)