[osbald]

I've been working with yahoo pipes recently. Initially with an intention to fill the gap left by Kirills departure from swings links of the day, but moreso now just to help me cope better with the shear number developer feeds I'm signed up to. http://pipes.yahoo.com/osbald

So first question, anybody know if/where the search API for dzone can be found? What I'd like to know is whether I can mix boolean OR terms and restrict results to various domains? something not too dissimilar to: http://search.twitter.com/operators , http://apiwiki.twitter.com/Search+API+Documentation

Currently I'm using a mix of tag queries and single term queries then having to merge the results in some fashion. Being able to reduce the number of queries would be a big help. So would being able to search specifying multiple tags (as delicious does). Although some some extent I'm mixing tags in the absence of a simple clientjava tag (or similar) that could be used to mark the java ui topics (swing, javafx).

The other issue I have is mixing the dzone results with the results from other feeds. Either direct from the source or via other aggregators like java.blogs or jroller. I get lots of duplicates. While I can use the item.link in most external feeds as a kind of identifying uri the dzone feeds dont seem to contain this information? Any plans of modifying the feeds to contain a dz:original-link of sorts? or a web service to turn dzone uris/identifiers into said links. Would prefer the former as latter would lead to a hit per item, which is a lot given the searching issues above.

Final question is their a bugtracker for dzone/jroller? know javalobby used to have it's own jira? Have noticed several issues which poking about, feedback just seems to end up in a email thread and no real visibility or open bugs or traceability.

[rick]

Sounds like you're doing interesting work to consolidate information sources, Richard. It is possible to do more advanced searching on DZone links than the UI on the website makes clear, but I don't know that it constitutes an API, per se. Matt will have to clarify that for us.

WRT the link resolution, we have deliberately avoided the inclusion of the resolved target link in the feeds. It may be possible to provide them via some kind of service API, when we can be confident that this won't be abused. Again, Matt is the boss.

Finally, we've been experimenting with UserVoice on the main dzone.com site, but I'm not sure it's really serving the purpose you're asking for (or what we most need.) Jira is too complicated, I think, and we need a more basic ticket system that allows us to manage cases, work with individuals, and resolve problems when possible. Is there any particular system that you really like or would recommend?

Cheers,
Rick

[matt]

You can in fact search by domain and can pull RSS for multiple tags. We just don't expose the latter very much. To search domains, use the following query:

Search Results For: domain:dotnet.dzone.com

I believe that gives you 10 results, but we can probably make that configurable.

To get an RSS feed of multiple tags, use the following url:

Search Results For: tag:java AND tag:gui

Let me know whether that works for you. In my test, it brought back things that had only those tags, it may need a bit of tweaking since it may be ignoring things that also have other tags

-Matt

[osbald]

Thanks Rick, good to know you two guys are still around. Don't know of any online bugtrackers offhand (not one that don't need installing/hosting. I'm assuming free online ones would be a bonus? I'll ask. Uservoice, GetSatisfaction etc.. are really only good for feedback, the problem is they're very time-sensitive and unless all bugs get fixed very quickly they'll get forgotten. If your JavaLobby source was open you could always open a google code, java.net, sourceforge, (github?) project and use their bug tracker (maybe you dont even need any source?).

[osbald]

Is it using a search engine I might know? well that's mostly lucence. Seem to half-remember you'd moved to a customized php engine? Tried some of that query syntax and agree it seems to be losing results perhaps they shouldn't. Was looking for a way to browse via combination of tags, possibly the most popular ones by tag and descending order over the last 24h, week, month etc.. Quite like how delicious lets you mix tags, but your url (ending with the tag).html would make this tricky, tags like "web 2.0" (space) would also make urls like http://www.dzone.com/links/tag/java+swing tricky.

Lack of boolean logic and wildcards in queries (so it seems) and poor tagging of posts to start with (see use of groovy tag) make some of my pipe queries impossible. Rather impossible to replace multiple searches, unions and attempted de-duping of results.

Actually started thinking that my feed reader should do some of the heavy lifting too. DZone is kind of interesting for it's re-tagging vs the random rss/atom categories of blog posters out in the wild - also its votes and click counts. But I'm not sure they're working quite so well with the new blood. Seems the vote count can be heavily influenced by the choice of title and description over the content. Plus you seem to have some tit-for-tat trolls voting stuff down, because "I don't like java" or "Im not a web designer" actually the lack of a reason makes this tricky to track - although Id suspect making comments mandatory might stop people voting at all. Seems the web crowd outnumber the java one, and the j2ee developers outnumber the swing ones so my pipes filtering down to the subject often only get 5-20 votes (or less).

Couple of things that might help is a widget to suggest tags when someone makes a new post, again not unlike delicious which seems to work off previous tags applied to similar urls/domains. The description/content could also be queried for keywords. Or have a means to express a 'field of interest', web designer, web developer, java developer etc.. either per user or per post and the means to filter.

Even then I dont suppose it'll fully solve duplicates like Positive JavaFX 1.0 review at eWEEK today, Sun Muscles into RIA Space with JavaFX essentially the same content twice, but ones a blogger talking about the latter.

BTW tried searches on jroller which didnt work at all, neither did the tag links? Although googling latter and queries on java.blogs shows these two feed aggregators are pretty much past their prime..?

[osbald]

(Edit)

Hit a forum bug with last reply - claimed I had to wait 30 seconds between posts -despite it taking me at least 20 mins to write. Still posted it though, which I didnt notice till I'd posted it a second time.

[NicolaShaw]

i read your article and get information arround the feedback.
i think whenever any body read this hopefully those will be happy.
thanks for giving the information.

[NicolaShaw]

sorry for again reply