Dev Diary RSS feeds using FreshRSS

[Splorghley]

I've noticed there have been threads requesting better RSS feeds, such as DD-only feeds, but to my knowledge the forum does not offer those.

If you're using FreshRSS, here's a DIY solution you might find helpful.

Method:

1. Go to the sub-forum for the game that interests you, and - on the left of the name of any dev diary thread - click the bubble that days "Developer Diary". This should take you to a DD-only version of the forum (e.g. https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/forums/tinto-talks.1171/?thread_type=prdx_dev_diary).
2. In FreshRSS, go to 'Add a feed', and copy the URL in. Under 'Type of feed source', select "HTML + XPath". A series of new fields will appear, which you must complete as follows.
3. You can put whatever you wish in the feed title, but make sure you put it in quotation marks. E.g.:

   "EU5 DDs"

4. Finding news items:

   //div[contains(@class, 'prdxDevDiary')]

5. Item title:

   descendant::div[@class='structItem-title']

6. Item content: (This is a single period / full stop. Unfortunately, I can't think of a good way to get article previews working from the forum page. You'll need to click through.)

   .

7. Item link (URL):

   descendant::div[@class='structItem-title']//a[@class!='labelLink']/@href

8. Leave 'Item thumbnail' blank
9. Item author:

   descendant::div[@class='structItem-minor']//ul//li//a[@class='username ']

10. Item date:

    descendant::div[@class='structItem-minor']//ul//li[@class='structItem-startDate']//a//time/@datetime

11. Item unique ID:

    descendant::div[@class='structItem-title']//a[@class!='labelLink']/@href

12. Hit 'Add'

You may wish to turn down the update frequency to something like once a day, since DDs are not generally posted all that often.

If you're not a fan of FreshRSS, note that it is possible to run it in the background (or as I do, in a Docker container on a server), and have it export the above as a normal RSS feed you can load in your reader of choice. To do so, make sure that Configuration > Authentication (under Administration) > Allow API Access is turned on. Then, on the page of the RSS feed you created, click the bookmark icon (top middle), go "Bookmark current query", click the cog next to the "User query" you just created, hit "Enable sharing by HTML & RSS", hit Save, and copy the RSS link that appears. You may wish to rename the "User query" itself to something more descriptive, as that will be used as the feed title.

Alternatively, you should be able to adapt the above XPaths to your choice of RSS bridge relatively easily.

I hope this is helpful!

Edit: Added unique ID, to ensure RSS readers can fetch updates intelligently if the feed is exported.