monkey!

August 26, 2008

Finding the best deals in your area with Yahoo Pipes

Today while twittering away spaetzel showed off a very cool Yahoo Pipe of his. This pipe basically took all the deals from the Kitchener / Waterloo region and created one big listing out of it. Via the power of RSS feeds, it automatically updates and does all the work for you.

So what is Yahoo Pipes? In about one sentence: It’s a way to combine a variety of data from the web into one seamless stream of useful information, tailored to your needs.

Enough chit chat - Let’s begin. Point your browser to http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/

Get into your Yahoo! account and hit “Create a Pipe”. In this simple Example we are going to take data from Kijiji, Craigslist, add some filters based on our needs, and then add it to our RSS Reader.

So you’re now in a big window, telling you to “drag modules here” Scary! I know. Not a problem. Let’s start by going to the left and clicking on and dragging the “Fetch Feed” module over to the center panel. It’ll take a second to create, but now you should have your first Yahoo Pipes module up!

Now, we need this to do something. Let’s head on over to Kijiji, pick your city and then select a category. We could get very broad, but there’s no point just yet. I’ve selected the video games category. Once on that page, you should see the ever-familiar Orange RSS Feed icon in your browser (For Firefox, it’s on the top right). Click it, and you should get the address for the RSS Feed of the video games section. It looks something like this for me:

http://kitchener.kijiji.ca/f-SearchAdRss?CatId=141

Take that address, go back to your Yahoo Pipe and put it into the URL Field on the module you placed. You should notice the icon change to the Kijiji icon.

Now let’s make it work for us! Click on the small circle connector near the bottom of the module you placed. You should see it stretch out. Bring the connector to the connecting piece on the module labeled “Output”. Now if you look at the bottom, in the Debugger panel you should see a bunch of text. Basically, that is a very simplied version of our output. In mine, I see a bunch of entries for PS3, Xbox, etc. You may see something different, depending on what you added as your category.

Ok, this is nice and all, but we could use some more!

Go back and add another “Fetch Feed” module. Head on over to Craigslist this time and repeat the process we just did, respectively on your newly placed module. Now, we’ve run into one small snag. We can’t link two modules to the Output. Output only has one connector. What do we do? We add a Union. On your left menu, you should see a category titled “Operators”. Open that up and drag a Union module onto your screen. You should now see the Union module has 5 connectors on top with one on the bottom. If you have more then 5 feeds being fetched, you’ll just have to add more unions, it’s that simple!

You should now notice your Output has a lot more variety and quantity of items being returned.

Finally, let’s add one more step. Let’s add some filters so we only get what we want. For this example, let’s say I am highly interested in everything that is PS3. In your left menu, head over to Operators and select and drag the Filter module onto your panel. Adjust your modules so your Union leads to the Filter, and the Filter now leads to the Output.

In a filter, you have two options. Block and Permit. I’ll use Permit for this example. Now, as I said I am interested in all things PS3 so I’m going to add a few keywords.

ps3, playstation

In the first field, you can select what field of data you want to match. In our basic case, it’s going to be item.title. Essentially I am looking for any items that contain the words ps3 and playstation. Very simple.

Now, I can move forward and add some more filters like xbox, or ninja’s or whatever else I want. I can also create a second filter module and set it to “Block” incase I do not ever want to see things containing nintendo or werewolves. (To be honest I am a big fan of both) In the end, your Pipe should look something like this:

Once this is complete, you can Save the Pipe and add it to your favourite RSS Reader, or simply bookmark the Pipe page if you are not a fan of rss readers.

Of course, as I said you can do all sorts of crazy and cool things to extend on this simple setup but this is just the tip of the iceberg. Try adding all the feeds you know, some filters, and play around with all the operators. You’ll be surprised just how complex you can get with something that looks like so much fun!

You can find some great video tutorials and examples on the Yahoo Pipes web page.

October 10, 2007

Save $100 on Dimplex Electric Fireplace Inserts

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