Sunday, September 20, 2009

Combine multiple Blogger RSS Feeds using Yahoo pipe and Feed burner


Recently we have started another blog YouCanStart.blogspot.com.

I wanted to combine the RSS feed (http://youcanstart.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default) of this new blog with RSS feed (http://qualitypoint.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default) of our main blog.

And also I wanted to use feedburner for knowing subscriber statistics.

So, I have redirected the blogger RSS feed by specifying the feedburner feed url in Blogger Dashboard.

It can be done at Settings->SiteFeed in the blogger Dashboard.



And, I combined both feeds http://youcanstart.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default and
http://qualitypoint.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default by using yahoo pipe.

I used the yahoo pipe output for burning the feed burner feed http://feeds.feedburner.com/QualitypointTechnologies

But this final output feed was not created correctly. It showed lot of issues such as missing items and duplicate items.

After doing more analysis and investigation, I found the reason for the issues.

The reason is, the original blogger feed (e.g http://qualitypoint.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default) was redirected to feedburner feed (http://feeds.feedburner.com/QualitypointTechnologies) even before getting merged with other blogger feed in the Yahoo pipe.

i-e combined feed is again used as input for the yahoo pipe.

So, to resolve this issue I created two feedburner feeds from the blogger feeds.

i-e http://feeds.feedburner.com/youCanStart was created from http://youcanstart.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default

And, http://feeds.feedburner.com/qualitypoint was created from http://qualitypoint.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default.

These feed burner feeds are used in yahoo pipe for getting the combined feed as shown in below screenshot.



After making these changes the final feed was created correctly without any issue.

So, my observation is Yahoo pipe is taking the redirected output if the blogger blog is set for redirecting the original feed.

But Feedburner is taking the original blogger feed even if the blogger blog is set for redirecting the original feed.

Why yahoo pipe and feed burner are behaving differently? Am I missing any setting to force the yahoo pipe to take the original feed?

So, it seems Yahoo pipe alone is not enough just for combining two blogger feeds, and the feedburner is required to achieve this.

If you know more about this strange behaviour you can share it here thro' comments.

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