ikiwiki/doc/plugins/aggregate.mdwn

[[!template id=plugin name=aggregate author="[[Joey]]"]]
[[!tag type/special-purpose]]

This plugin allows content from other feeds to be aggregated into the
wiki. To specify feeds to aggregate, use the
[[ikiwiki/directive/aggregate]] [[ikiwiki/directive]].

## requirements

The [[meta]] and [[tag]] plugins are also recommended to be used with this
one. Either the [[htmltidy]] or [[htmlbalance]] plugin is suggested, since
feeds can easily contain html problems, some of which these plugins can fix.

## triggering aggregation

You will need to run ikiwiki periodically from a cron job, passing it the
--aggregate parameter, to make it check for new posts. Here's an example
crontab entry:

	*/15 * * * * ikiwiki --setup my.wiki --aggregate --refresh

The plugin updates a file `.ikiwiki/aggregatetime` with the unix time stamp
when the next aggregation run could occur. (The file may be empty, if no
aggregation is required.) This can be integrated into more complex cron
jobs or systems to trigger aggregation only when needed.

Alternatively, you can allow `ikiwiki.cgi` to trigger the aggregation. You
should only need this if for some reason you cannot use cron, and instead
want to use a service such as [WebCron](http://webcron.org). To enable
this, turn on `aggregate_webtrigger` in your setup file. The url to
visit is `http://whatever/ikiwiki.cgi?do=aggregate_webtrigger`. Anyone
can visit the url to trigger an aggregation run, but it will only check
each feed if its `updateinterval` has passed.

## aggregated pages

This plugin creates a page for each aggregated item. 

If the `aggregateinternal` option is enabled in the setup file (which is
the default), aggregated pages are stored in the source directory with a
"._aggregated" extension. These pages cannot be edited by web users, and
do not generate first-class wiki pages. They can still be inlined into a
blog, but you have to use `internal` in [[PageSpecs|IkiWiki/PageSpec]],
like `internal(blog/*)`.

If `aggregateinternal` is disabled, you will need to enable the [[html]]
plugin as well as aggregate itself, since feed entries will be stored as
HTML, and as first-class wiki pages -- each one generates
a separate HTML page in the output, and they can even be edited. This
option is provided only for backwards compatability.