Updated: MySpace made some back-end changes rendering the previous tutorial invalid. Current extraction rules should now work for extracting MySpace comments to a suitable format for feeding through an RSS reader. Thanks to Max for pointing out the small bloat in the filter code.
MySpace continues to stand at the top as far as social networks are concerned. Until the service begins to embrace some of the modern conveniences of the net - namely RSS and content syndication - users will be forced to continue manual page refreshes. Although my account is not receiving the same attention it once did, I felt it would be rude not to share the following for MySpace users seeking an RSS alternative for accessing comments.
For the following tutorial, I decided to use the Feed43 (free) service to filter through MySpace crud in order to create a shiny new feed to toss into a desktop or web based feed reader. Before attempting the following tutorial, please do your own homework regarding Really Simple Syndication (RSS).
Follow the steps below and you’ll be one step closer to minimizing the amount of time you spend logging into MySpace.
- Create a free account at Feed43.com
- Make note of your unique friend ID
Your friend ID is a numeric string within your MySpace profile URL. - Login to your Feed43 account and select ‘Create new feed’. Under Step 1, enter the following URL. Replace __FriendID__ with your own unique ID.
http://myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.homeComments&friendID=__FriendID__
Select ‘Reload’. Feed43 then returns the Source Code for your main profile. If no source code is returned, double check your ID. Your comments, the ones we want to extract, are somewhere in that mess of code called
MyMessMySpace. Now let’s move on to extraction rules. - Part 2. Defining the search pattern is the challenging part of the tutorial. Seeing as though I have already gone through and created a working feed for my account, I’ve alleviated that oh so stressful burden. What we’re doing here is specifying what parts of the source code Feed43 should filter and transform into a working RSS feed. Here are the following ‘Extraction’ rules:
Global Search Pattern:
{%}
Item (repeatable) Search Pattern:
<th>{%}<br />{*}
<h4>{%}</h4>{*}
{%}<br /><br />{*} - Once you’ve entered the necessary extraction rules, click ‘Extract’. Feed43 utilizes the specified rules above and kindly displays the ‘Clipping Data’.
- Continue to Step 3 to define the output format. I’ve conveniently formatted published feeds to display in the following manner:
MySpace username + URL
Comment Date
Comment TextThe ‘Feed Title’ & ‘Link’ should already be filled. Feel free to edit as needed. Make sure to add a relevant description. Maybe something along the lines of “MySpace is my life and there is nothing beyond the front door unless I have a constant Internet connection to MySpace”. Continue on to the ‘RSS Item Properties’ and copy the following:
Item Title Template:
{%2}
Item Link Template:
{%1}
Item Content Template:
{%3}
Alternatively, you can choose to combine all three fields into one. I advise against this if you want to keep some sense of organization to individual posts. Click ‘Preview’ and Feed43 will display the finished results.
- If you’re content with the results, scroll to the bottom of the page and grab your fresh Feed43 powered MySpace comment feed (XML).
The tutorial is a great example of the power that Feed43 offers. Feel free to edit the structure of published content to better suit your needs.
On a side note: With the above tutorial, you can create multiple RSS feeds to keep track of your friends comments as well as complete strangers (if that’s your kinda thing). [Digg].
72 Comments
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Good guide! RSS is the future. I can’t wait till every device is RSS capable.
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most devices are or can be rss enabled. it’s just a matter of finding a method for the means.
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Yeah I mean like my toaster and stuff… well not my toaster. Lets see… maybe the fish pond? So I know when I have to or don’t have to change the filters. That would be so cool…
A really good feed reader would be nice. I have a del.icio.us link in my firefox bar (its a firefox extension) that works really well. I just click it, it opens a window, and does the rest very easily. I want to be able to do something like that for RSS but also have it accessable from anywhere without a fee.
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i think your dreams are a little far fetched if not ridiculous
an rss feed for your pond? that’s borderline laziness isn’t it? the toaster?
as far as simple rss subscription and reading, if a full blown feed reader is too much, consider using something like netvibes [startpage]. you can drop subscriptions in there using chicklets if needed and reads are accessible from anywhere.
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hey, i’m having problems with the code - at first glance, it appears to be displaying everything how it should, but it isn’t displaying the latest 2 entries.. it’s displaying my friend’s names properly, but since the 2 latest posts are missing, the names are lining up with the wrong comments..
i double checked everything, and i copied it exactly as you did.. any suggestions?
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i’m don’t think i’m following you correctly. is the main content of the comments being cut off?
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no, the main content is fine, whats displaying wrong is the name of the person who left them.
and it’s because the script isn’t pulling the latest 2 comments for some reason. however, it is pulling the names of the people who left the last 2 comments- making the names and the comments not line up correctly.
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I’m having a tough time reproducing the issue. Maybe drop Feed43 a message and request support? If you’ve copied the extraction rules exactly as I have them set, I don’t know why it wouldn’t be working. I’ve tested this with a few other accounts and haven’t had any issues yet. I’ll have some other people test and see.
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So I typed “RSS Feeds on myspace profile” into google and guess what the first link was? Pretty cool.
Anyway, this isn’t exactly what I wanted to do. What I want to do is have the RSS feed from my other blog as a custom header on my MySpace blog. Is this possible?
I went to http://www.tickermyfeed.com and made a nice little iframe only to find out I can’t use it because MySpace won’t let me. (Damn them) If you know of any way to use something like tickermyfeed to put RSS from other sites onto MySpace, could you post it ?
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MySpace is severly crippled for valid security reasons. The only way I know of inserting any sort of dynamic rotating RSS feeds is to use something like Feedburner. While similar services requires the ability to insert Javascript into pages, Feedburner provides the service using standard images. Example below - using the email signature - for 5ThirtyOne [with the code below]:
<a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/5thirtyone" rel="nofollow"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/5thirtyone.gif" style="border:0" alt="5ThirtyOne"/></a>
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Even though this isn’t a true RSS feed, it does the trick. It shows recent posts that have been made on my WordPress blog and redirects readers aways from my MySpace.
As usual, you rock!
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Heh. Feed43 tells me the following when I hit ‘Reload’: “Effective URL is http://www.myspace.com/….. Page too big. First 102400 bytes loaded.” And then following everything (at least I seem to be–I hope…:-P) it does nothing.
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I’m copying the Item search patter as it appears on this page, but when I try to extract the comment data I get the message “Item pattern matched 0 times.”
Help! Thank you.
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I’m having the same problem. At first I thought it was because I wasn’t using the default myspace layout, then my profile was private…now it’s all default & I still have this problem.
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great i love this
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Is there any way that you could check the instructions and update them? I think that enough has changed on myspace for this to not work anymore. I tried for about 45 minutes and couldn’t figure it out. I’m sure I could if I figured out how to parse better, but I’d love to see a working version so I could figure out what to do exactly. Thanks
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I’ll definitely recheck the steps. MySpace could very well have changed the backend a little bit.
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Post updated 9/3/2006 with new global settings to ensure it works. Let me know how it works. I just ran through two profiles and results returned as they should have.
Note that there may be a few encoding issues for displayed URLs due to the way Feed43 processes the rules for the comments. No worries though as the feeds will display the content body text and images properly.
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i believe the repeatable pattern search should read:
{%}{*}
{%}{*}
{%}{*}
or else the authors are shifted down by a slot if you know what i mean
Thanks great idea i would never had thought of it!
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Are you certain? I tested the pattern before posting and I thought the results looked as they should have.
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You inspired me! While I don’t use MySpace, I use LiveJournal, alot. So I set up the same thing to view my livejournal friends account via RSS through feed43. Check it out here
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I was having a little trouble to with the link. In the RSS the Link would always end up http://www.myspace.com/author_name. Author_name of course being the name the author had when posting. So I changed the Item (repeatable) Search Pattern to
{*}
href=”{%}”{*}
>{%}{*}
{%}{*}
{%}{*}
then changed the Item Template Title to
{%3} (Author: {%2})
Item Link Template
{%1}
Item Content Template
{%4}
-Raz88
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Sorry I changed the Item (Repeatable) Search Pattern to:
{*}
href=”{%}”{*}
>{%}{*}
{%}{*}
{%}{*}
-Raz88
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Great tutorial! I hesitate to use it though, I just stick with my crumby, icky default myspace page. See, I’m a youth pastor and when I did a div overlay to my site before my students really complained, they didn’t know where to find stuff, they couldn’t figure out how to comment, they didn’t see my friend list, etc. It seems that teens (i.e., the vast majority of people on myspace) like the gaudiness and the cookie cutter designs.
Great tutorial though! I really like your current myspace design.
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That’s awesome setting it up for LiveJournal. And to Raz88, as long as everyone gets the overall gist of the tutorial, I’ve done my job.
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Nice!! I don’t think I’ll end up using this personally, but it’s a cool tutorial nonetheless. Great work, once again Derek!
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I tried using your method for Item (repeatable) Search Pattern Derek, and I as well couldn’t get it working with the comment author link.
Similar to what Raz88’s suggested I found this worked the best.
Item (repeatable) Search Pattern
<th>{*}
href="{%}"{*}
>{%}</a>{*}
<h4>{%}</h4>{*}
{%}<br /><br />{*}
Raz88’s suggestions for Item Template Title, Item Link Template, and Item Content Template worked great too.
Still it was a good tutorial though. The less time away from Myspace the better.
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i m so cute you would never find a girl like me!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!ha ha ha aha ha ha thats hella funny but hit me bake ok late.
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will this work with a div overlay???? I am having the hardest of times and I think its with my item repeatable. can someone email me if they know the solution to use this with a div overlay???
thanks
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That was directed towards Derek or anyone else who knows whats up. I am very tired and must have hit the wrong quote button.
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i haven’t read the many many comments found here , nor do i know how myspace functions . but it seems that nobody have mentioned Ponyfish RSS Feed Builder . it doesn’t get easier . of course i could be mistaken ..
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I just need to know how to post an rss feed for myspace site for my profile on an rss feed on another profile when it offers it
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I hope i’m not doing something really ridiculous here, but everytime I get feed43 to access the link the source it displays underneath is that of the “you must be logged in to do that” page. I am logged into my myspace in a different window. I am using Safari browser but have also tried mozilla and received the same results. I can’t see any meantion of this happening in any of the other comments.
thanks x
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MySpace is a bit volatile and seems to change a few things on the backend from time to time. Is this a persistent problem?
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I tried doing this a few weeks ago and was getting 0 items matched, so i presume the same thing was happening. My profile number is 3645936 but i’ve also tried with a few other profiles and seem to get the same thing.
I wanted to run the rss back through a flash ticker so I could attempt to do the entire profile in flash.
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His layouts work everyone that sed otherwise.
Wondering if you have had any luck with trying to get the comments to appear in the overlay. Now wen ppl enter comments, it makes he view all comment page higher (they creep underneath the footer overlay)
If i can get this working i think my page will be complete
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Hi,
I followed the tutorial and thought I had it done correctly, except the feed doesn’t look right. Screenshot here: http://melissawong.com/rsserror.jpg
Any help you can provide for me would be GREATLY appreciated.
Thanks!
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Hello Derek. Thanks for all your help, you’re really generous with this stuff. I have a question for you:
I noticed on the “edit profile” section of Myspace that it warns against using javascript. Well, I saw the word “javascript” in the RSS feed. Does this mean it’s javascript, or does that just happen to be in there?
Probably a stupid question, but I thought I’d ask before my profile gets deleted.
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MySpace serves JavaScript. MySpace user are not able to embed JS into their profile. Does that answer the question?
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Alright thanks, so in other words, Myspace shouldn’t have a problem with in then, right?
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I’m having a problem with this. appearently myspace has made you have to long in now to view a users comments. if you could help me get this to work with the profile page that would be awesome
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MySpace now requires a logged-in session to ‘View All Comments’, using a log-in token. Unfortunately, the token changes each time you sign in, so I’m pretty sure you can’t just use any token you’ve copied from any log-in (though, I haven’t tried…).
However, you can still view anybody’s main Profile page, logged in or not. You can also pull the comments from it using Feed43. Of course, you won’t get ALL the comments, but that really isn’t a problem, since Feed43 only allows a maximum 20 items to be pulled from a source (pay accounts on Feed43 allow 50), which is less than you’ll see on a standard profile anyway. Plus, you can be sure they’ll always be the latest comments.
The search routines are going to be different than those above, as well.
First, point your new Feed to the URL of your profile (or the profile of whoever’s comments you want to read, if you’re really scary).
EXAMPLE: http://www.myspace.com/Need_A_Life
Where Need_A_Life is either the address you set in MySpace or your FriendID number (or your friend’s, or enemy’s, scary person). Click “Reload”.
Now, it’s time to set your search parameters. Here’s the ones I use - I’ve only tested this with my page, so you may need to play with them a bit. Also, they aren’t the prettiest results. I’ll explain in a bit.
Global:
Add Comment{%}
Item (repeatable):
{%}{*}
{%}{*}
{%}{*}
These search params work most of the time, but break if you’ve got an “Add Comment” link somewhere else on your page (like a custom Comment form in an overlay), or if someone has posted a table in one of there comments. You can fix the first one by changing the text a bit (make it say something like “Add a Comment”), and the second one by deleting the offending comment (or disallowing HTML in your comments altogether).
This returns four variable marker thingies, defined as follows (don’t copy/paste this anywhere, it’s just for reference)
{%1} - URL to Friend
{%2} - User Name of Friend
{%3} - Date Posted
{%4} - Comment ( preceeded by a BR tag )
Notice how the Comment section is preceeded by a BR tag? Well, I couldn’t figure out a way around it. I decided to use it to my advantage, though. My layout template looks like this:
Title:{%2}
Link:{%1}
Content:{%3}{%4}
The {%4} tag starts with a line break, so the date and actual comment are seperated by a carriage return. Messiness used to your advantage.
Like I said, I did this quick and dirty, so it’s not made for compatibility. I suggest you play around with different search parameters, and get creative. Feed43 is a great service, and well-worth learning to use it.
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From above, the following got a little messed up:
This should read:
Global:
Add Comment{%}
Item (repeating):
{%}{*}
{%}{*}
{%}{*}
Teaches me to post before reading the directions….
Oh, and pay attention to the line-breaking in the Item section. Both {%}’s and {*}’s need to be on the same line (Feed43 looks for *exact* matches, line-breaks and everything.
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still doesn’t work for me, im getting 0 matches
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I came up with this search pattern…it kind of works…if only I could get rid of that img tag
<a href="{*}" rel="nofollow">{%}</a>{*}
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I didn’t put that rel in there
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Funny. Seems as though WordPress prefers to include that rel tag. I tried to delete it a few times for you.
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well thanks for trying derek
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right now I’m just working on getting the commentors name, but I can’t seem to get rid of there user pic since it is in a similar link tag as their name. I’m real bad at this search pattern thing.
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okay derek I’m getting pissed…its leaving out my code even though I put it in that code syntax
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Sorry about that, sometimes the plugins are a bit screwy. If you need to share add spaces between characters and leave a note saying to remove them (if not needed).
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here I’ll try what you said
{%}{*}
{%}{*}
{%}{*}
I put a crap load of spaces in their, now figure out where they are and delete them
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nope just got rid of my code even with the spaces
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well I got mine working, check out the link
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Ugh, I still can’t get this to work, even attempting to follow Mike’s progress. Is there any chance there’s a resolution to this Derek?
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Of course not!
I’m running into the same posting problem, so I gave up and just made a text file with the searches I used.
Remember, this search pattern only works from your main MySpace profile page, i.e. “http://www.myspace.com/_friendID_” where _friendID_ is either your ID number or your profile name - the one that you permanently set.
Here’s the file:
http://www.edgemontpark.net/feed43info.txt
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PS - If you’re using Internet Explorer or another web browser that automatically tries to read and intrepret the file, either save it or ‘View->Source’; it’s plain text, so it gets a little ugly when it’s parsed as HTML.
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When will myspace formally have RSS ?
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Feed43.com is no longer free. Any other suggestions?
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Thought I’d made this comment yesterday, but while feed43.com is in fact still free, MySpace now requires you to log in to view the comments page of anyone’s profile, which makes very little sense in my opinion, since the most recent comments are public. Is there any workaround for this?
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yes.
Dont use myspace. — lol.
Do what derek has done and create your own website using php & wordpress.
sorry for sounding mean, you’ll have more luck if u try over at http://www.myspace-talk.com/forums/
ps to Jeff - if u have comments showing in your overlay profile, then people dont have to log in to view the comments, as there right their on ur home page profile
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Hey I was wondering if there was anyway to display the users photo in the rss feed like it displays on a normal myspace page. Thanks
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worked for me, thankyou so much !
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Has anyone tried using dappit.com? Someone seems to have made something there that does just what we want, but i can only get it to work with “tom”’s page.
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sorry, i try like this and its worked out…
Global Search Pattern:
{%}
Item (repeatable) Search Pattern*:
{*}
<a href="{%}" rel="nofollow">{*}
{%}{*}
</a>{*}
{*}
{*}
{*}
<a href="{%}" rel="nofollow">{*}
{%}</a>{*}
{*}
{*}
{*}
{*}
{*}
{*}
{*}
{*}
{*}
{*}
{%}
{*}
{*}
{%}
{*}
{*}
{*}
{*}
see the outputs
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I’m sorry for spamming but I think that if I can get this to work it will help others trying to make this work. Feel free to delete or edit any of these posts that don’t work.
GLOBAL SEARCH PATTERN:
Add Comment{%}
ITEM(REPEATABLE) SEARCH PATTERN:
<a{*}] {%} </a> {*} <a href=”{%}”> {*} <span{*}> {%} </span> {%} </td>
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Great Website! It helps me a lot with my tough homework. I’m not so hot in that class
Thanks for the hard work, keep it up!
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