RoR: Use Feedzirra to pull different feeds and display as one

Question

I can successfully pull different feeds using the Feedzirra gem and get feed updates. However, each feed that I'd like to pull has different content (ie: Github Public Feed, last.fm recently played, etc.).

What is the best way to go about combining all of these feeds into one? Right now I have different models for different types of feeds and some feeds use different timestamps than the others.

Answer 1

m,

You could add multiple extra fields to hold each of the unique attributes in an uber-feed object, only filling in the ones that come from each particular feed at time of processing. (It's kind of like the NoSQL model in that way, though not quite, since you have to define the fields ahead of time, but you can add any arbitrary field as a data-holder.)

This is how you add a new field to all instances of a feed...

Feedzirra::Feed.add_common_feed_entry(:my_custom_field)

You'll find a little more dialog about this here...

https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups#!msg/feedzirra/_h4y8_vwDGc/N8sjym6NouEJ

Answer 2

You are creating an activity feed -- here are several gems that you can research on how to create activity feeds: https://www.ruby-toolbox.com/categories/Rails_Activity_Feeds