Syndication Subscription

[Aaron Swartz <aswartz@swartzfam.com>]

It seems that there's a strong need for a publish-and-subscribe system for
news syndication. Rather than having aggregators constantly check for
updates, they could be notified about them using XML-RPC. To start a
discussion, here are a list of functions that seem necessary:

PUBLISHER FUNCTIONS
getPublications() - Returns a list of publicationIDs.

subscribePublication(publicationID,url) - Subscribes the XML-RPC handler at
URL to publicationID. For security reasons, we might require that url be on
the same machine that makes the request. Returns a subscriptionID. If the
machine is already subscribed, return the old subscriptionID. Machines are
automatically unsubscribed if the server cannot reach them for a specified
number of times. 

unsubscribePublication(subscriptionID) - Unsubscribe from a publication.

getStoriesSince(publicationID,time) - Gets the new stories for publicationID
since 'time'.


SUBSCRIBER FUNCTIONS

newStory(subscriptionID,storyID...) - Notifies about a new story.


Obviously, I'm leaving out a lot, such as specification of the format for
story information. However, this should be a good starting point to get a
discussion going. I look forward to hearing what others think.

-- 
Aaron Swartz <aswartz@upclink.com>|      The Info Network
<http://www.swartzfam.com/aaron/> |    <http://theinfo.org>
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