Technical Note - Announcements
Summary
The ECS Announcements script allows the embedding of threads from the forum, as well as RSS feeds of forum threads.
Details
Script location and parameters
The announcements script is at
https://ecs.wgtn.ac.nz/cgi-bin/announcements
Regardless of how you access the script, it takes the same parameters:
| Parameter |
Values |
Effect |
rm |
web (default), rss |
Specifies whether to run in HTML or RSS mode |
num |
Thread number from forum |
Chooses a thread to display. Implicitly overrides the board parameter. |
board |
Board ID from forum |
Chooses a board to display, displaying all the messages in each thread, ordered by the last changed thread. |
display |
Number, default is 3 for web, 9999 for RSS |
Number of messages to display. |
threads |
Number, default infinite |
Number of threads to limit to. |
Deriving the thread number or board ID
The thread number is the
num parameter in the URL for viewing a
thread, for example:
https://ecs.wgtn.ac.nz/cgi-bin/yabb/YaBB.pl?num=1207875369
is a thread number of 1207875369.
https://ecs.wgtn.ac.nz/cgi-bin/announcements?num=1207875369=
The board ID is the
board parameter in the URL when viewing a
board, for example:
https://ecs.wgtn.ac.nz/cgi-bin/yabb/YaBB.pl?board=COMP102_2008T1
is a board ID of COMP102_2008T1.
Web use
Foswiki
To include an announcement thread on Foswiki use the following code:
%INCLUDE{"https://ecs.wgtn.ac.nz/cgi-bin/announcements?ParametersHere"}%
For example:
%INCLUDE{"https://ecs.wgtn.ac.nz/cgi-bin/announcements?display=3&num=1207875369"}%
Displays the last three messages in thread 1207875369.
HTML pages (Personal homepages)
On the web, the script is commonly used to embed an announcements thread (hence the script's name!). In order to do this, you would use the following code:
<!--#include virtual="/cgi-bin/announcements?ParametersHere" -->
For example:
<!--#include virtual="/cgi-bin/announcements?display=3&num=1203562714" -->
Displays the last three messages in thread 1203562714.
To get the RSS feed of a thread, you simply add the URL below to your feed reader, replacing ParametersHere with the parameters you want. It is recommended you only pass a thread ID and have your RSS reader filter the results. You
can pass the
board parameter, but the behaviour will be quite strange moving from a threaded environment to a non-threaded one.
If you have multiple instances of this script in your reader, you'll probably want to change the title of the feed in your reader, so you can identify the different instances.
https://ecs.wgtn.ac.nz/cgi-bin/announcements?rm=rss&ParametersHere
You can use this form to generate an RSS feed link to add an RSS feed to your reader.
