| 1 | # Action Streams Plugin for Movable Type |
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| 2 | # Author: Mark Paschal |
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| 3 | # Copyright 2008 Six Apart, Ltd. |
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| 4 | # License: Artistic, licensed under the same terms as Perl itself |
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| 5 | |
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| 6 | |
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| 7 | OVERVIEW |
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| 8 | |
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| 9 | The Action Streams plugin utilizes Movable Type to monitor a collection of 3rd party web sites |
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| 10 | and services for changes to a user's profile. The plugin will then aggregate and collect those |
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| 11 | actions so that they can be published to a user's website, blog or profile. |
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| 12 | |
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| 13 | The plugin adds the ability for an author within Movable Type to list their accounts on 3rd |
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| 14 | party web sites. From these accounts, a periodic task automatically imports the author's |
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| 15 | activities on those services via RSS, Atom, and some web scraping. This allows the author to |
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| 16 | create an Action Stream completely under their control. |
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| 17 | |
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| 18 | This plugin then provides a set of template tags as well that make it possible to publish and |
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| 19 | display the author's accounts and actions on any page powered by Movable Type. The default |
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| 20 | example templates use the Microformats XFN and hAtom to make the information more accessible. |
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| 21 | |
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| 22 | |
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| 23 | PREREQUISITES |
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| 24 | |
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| 25 | - Movable Type 4.1 or higher |
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| 26 | - Scheduled task or cron job to execute the Periodic Tasks script (see below) |
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| 27 | |
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| 28 | The Action Streams plugin ships with all of the external libraries you should need to run it. |
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| 29 | |
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| 30 | Note: Action Streams does not work when run-periodic-tasks is run in daemon mode. |
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| 31 | |
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| 32 | |
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| 33 | INSTALLATION |
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| 34 | |
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| 35 | 1. Configure a cronjob (see below) for the script run-periodic-tasks. |
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| 36 | 2. Unpack the ActionStreams archive. |
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| 37 | 3. Copy the contents of ActionStreams/extlib into /path/to/mt/extlib/ |
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| 38 | 3. Copy the contents of ActionStreams/mt-static into /path/to/mt/mt-static/ |
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| 39 | 4. Copy the contents of ActionStreams/plugins into /path/to/mt/plugins/ |
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| 40 | 5. Navigate to your profile, and click on "Other Profiles." |
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| 41 | 6. Build a list of your accounts that you wish to display and stream actions from. |
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| 42 | 7. Edit your stylesheet to include needed CSS. (see STYLES below) |
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| 43 | 8. Edit your templates to display your other profiles and your Action Stream. (see |
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| 44 | example_templates folder) A template set is also provided for convenience. |
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| 45 | 9. Edit the plugin's settings to enable automatically rebuilding your blog as new |
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| 46 | actions are imported. This setting is under each of your blog's plugin settings. |
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| 47 | |
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| 48 | |
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| 49 | CRONJOB |
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| 50 | |
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| 51 | Add the following lines to your crontab to execute the script at the hour and 30 minutes |
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| 52 | past the hour: |
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| 53 | |
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| 54 | # Movable Type's scheduled tasks script: |
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| 55 | 0,30 * * * * cd /path/to/mt; perl ./tools/run-periodic-tasks |
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| 56 | |
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| 57 | |
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| 58 | STYLES |
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| 59 | |
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| 60 | To add icons to your Action Streams and other basic styling, add the following line to |
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| 61 | the top of your main stylesheet (normally styles.css). |
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| 62 | |
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| 63 | @import url(<MT:StaticWebPath>/plugins/ActionStreams/css/action-streams.css); |
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| 64 | |
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| 65 | The classes used in the template code examples use the same classes as the default templates |
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| 66 | and thus they work well with the default themes. |
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| 67 | |
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| 68 | |
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| 69 | TEMPLATE CODE |
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| 70 | |
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| 71 | The example_templates folder within the Action Streams plugin includes example widgets and |
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| 72 | index templates which make use of an author's Other Profiles and Action Stream. Though it |
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| 73 | is possible to create Action Streams combining actions from multiple authors, all of the |
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| 74 | examples display profiles or actions from a single author. |
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| 75 | |
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| 76 | The following template code will produce a list of actions for the author "Melody Nelson": |
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| 77 | |
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| 78 | <mt:ActionStreams display_name="Melody Nelson" lastn="20"> |
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| 79 | <mt:if name="__first__"> |
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| 80 | <div class="action-stream"> |
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| 81 | <ul class="action-stream"> |
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| 82 | </mt:if> |
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| 83 | <li class="service-icon service-<mt:var name="service_type">"><mt:StreamAction></li> |
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| 84 | <mt:if name="__last__"> |
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| 85 | </ul> |
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| 86 | </div> |
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| 87 | </mt:if> |
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| 88 | </mt:ActionStreams> |
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| 89 | |
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| 90 | It is recommended that you add the above code as a template module or widget to make it |
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| 91 | easier to include and display profile actions throughout your web site. |
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| 92 | |
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| 93 | For more detailed examples see the templates in the example_templates directory. |
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| 94 | |
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| 95 | There are additional template tags, such as mt:StreamActionThumbnailURL, which need to |
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| 96 | be documented better in the future. |
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| 97 | <mt:setvarblock name="thumb_url"><mt:StreamActionThumbnailURL></mt:setvarblock> |
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| 98 | <mt:if name="thumb_url"> |
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| 99 | <div style='padding-left: 20px; padding-bottom: 10px; padding-top: 5px;'> |
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| 100 | <img src='<mt:var name='thumb_url'>' /> |
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| 101 | </div> |
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| 102 | </mt:if> |
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| 103 | |
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| 104 | CREDITS |
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| 105 | |
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| 106 | This distribution contains icons from Silk, an icon set by Mark James, |
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| 107 | licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 License. |
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| 108 | |
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| 109 | http://www.famfamfam.com/lab/icons/silk/ |
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| 110 | |
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| 111 | |
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