It’s been a while since I’ve posted a 2 minute Yahoo Pipes video, but I had an opportunity to do a guest post on the Yahoo Developer Network blog (yay!), and I thought that a 2 minute screencast would be the best way to demonstrate my pipe.
This 2 minute demo takes a series of keywords from a CSV file and uses Yahoo Pipes to run each keyword through various searches. This technique can be very powerful when you search multiple services, but I’ve simplified the process to make it easier to understand the fundamentals of the technique by running the list of keywords only through Twitter search.
Here’s a quote about the technical details of the pipe from the Yahoo Developer Network post:
Technical Details and More Information:
- The Demo Pipe. A copy of the Keyword CSV demo pipe – click “View Source” to see the modules.
- Fetch CSV Module. Enter the URL of the CSV file (make sure that it already exists in a publicly accessible location) along with information about column names and separation characters as needed.
- Loop module with URL Builder. Loops through each element in the CSV file and builds a search URL formatted for RSS output. In this case, we used Twitter search.
- Loop module with Fetch Feed. Loops through each URL built in the previous step and fetches the feed associated with the item.
- Sort Module. Sort by date in descending order to make sure things are sorted in a logical manner.
- Pipe Output. The final module in every Yahoo Pipe.
I’ve created many Yahoo Pipes, and most of them have been published on my Yahoo Pipes and RSS Hacks page where you can also learn more about my Yahoo Pipes Training course on May 7th.
Related Fast Wonder Blog posts
This video shows how to use data from Google Docs as an input into Yahoo Pipes. In a previous video, I showed how to use a list of items in a CSV file. If you haven’t already watched the CSV input demo, you should start with it, since this pipe builds on the previous one. A CSV file is a great choice when you want to fetch a bunch of feeds and change them frequently without having to update your pipe, but a Google Doc is a great choice for when you want to easily update inputs to the pipe without needing to update a file on a webserver.
More Details
- The Demo Pipe. A copy of the Using Google Docs Inputs in Yahoo Pipes Demo click “View Source” to see the modules.
- Fetch CSV Module. Enter the URL of a Google Spreadsheet that has already been published as a web page and append &output=csv to the end of the URL. Here is the example we used in the video.
- Loop module with Fetch Feed. Loops through each element in the CSV file and fetches the feed associated with the item.
- Filter Module. Filter by a couple of keywords.
- Sort Module. Sort by date in descending order to make sure things are sorted in a logical manner.
- Pipe Output. The final module in every Yahoo Pipe.
I’ve created many Yahoo Pipes, and most of them have been published on my Yahoo Pipes and RSS Hacks page where you can also learn more about my Yahoo Pipes Training courses.
Related Fast Wonder Blog posts
This video shows how to get input from a list of items in a CSV file, and it introduces the loop module. A CSV file is a great choice when you want to fetch a bunch of feeds and change them frequently without having to update your pipe. If you haven’t already watched the 2 Minute Yahoo Pipes Introductory Demo, I strongly suggest that you watch it. This demo builds on the basic structure developed in the introductory demo. The CSV file I’m using also contains the same feeds from ReadWriteWeb and GigaOM that we used in the original demo plus a few others.
More Details
- The Demo Pipe. A copy of the CSV File Input in Yahoo Pipes Demo click “View Source” to see the modules.
- Fetch CSV Module. Enter the URL of the CSV file (make sure that it already exists in a publicly accessible location) along with information about column names and separation characters as needed.
- Loop module with Fetch Feed. Loops through each element in the CSV file and fetches the feed associated with the item.
- Filter Module. Filter by a couple of keywords.
- Sort Module. Sort by date in descending order to make sure things are sorted in a logical manner.
- Pipe Output. The final module in every Yahoo Pipe.
I’ve created many Yahoo Pipes, and most of them have been published on my Yahoo Pipes and RSS Hacks page where you can also learn more about my Yahoo Pipes Training courses.
Related Fast Wonder Blog posts
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