./script/plugin install -h

yielded the helpful information I needed. Last July, a patch was committed to Rails that added the -r ( or –revision ) parameter.

The -r parameter will take either the name of a git branch or a tag string to checkout instead of the default master branch.

So issuing the following command:

./script/plugin install git://github.com/cpjolicoeur/my_plugin.git -r BRANCH_NAME

will checkout the BRANCH_NAME branch of the git repository.

Very helpful when testing and debugging new features and bugfixes in a plugin.

Version 1.0.4 is now available at wordpress.org for you to download.

The most significant changes are related to the plugin configuration and Ruby CRON script processing. FeedCache no longer accesses the file system for storing configuration and RSS feed caches. There is now a single master configuration file and a YAML file with all the feed group listings. I’m using the spyc php yaml class library for the YAML processing and it works as promised.

The Ruby CRON script now uses the more standard FeedTools gem instead of the old feedparser library I was using. FeedTools seems to be much more stable and memory-friendly then feedparser and I’m pretty happy with it.

Another HUGE improvement for the Ruby CRON script is the fact that all RSS feeds are now cached directly into your WordPress database instead of in plaintext cache files like previous versions. You will need the ActiveRecord gem available on your server (along with Rubygems, of course).

If you are hosted on Dreamhost, you already have all the necessary gems installed automatically so you won’t need to install them yourself. If you are like man and host on your own dedicated server or even a VPS, just install the gems with the usual commands:

sudo gem install

I also have FeedCache hosted up on GitHub now if you are interested and are a GitHub user. If you want to help work on FeedCache or expand/enhance the plugin, fork the code on GitHub and submit any patches to me there.

The plugin is designed to be a quick, easy-to-use way to generate ATOM feeds for your controllers. An interesting issue with the plugin is that it doesn’t allow you to manually set each ATOM entries link URL. The plugin sets the link field manually using the _polymorphic_url()_ method.

@xml.link(:rel => 'alternate', :type => 'text/html', :href => @view.polymorphic_url(record))

My problem with this arose when trying to generate a feed for a nested resource. I wanted to generate an ATOM feed for all Comments left on a certain Question in my Rails application. Comments are not viewed individually, but rather as a threaded list in the Show method of the Question to which they belong. The URL generated by the _polymorphic_url()_ call didn’t quite handle this properly.

The more I thought about this, I can see other instances as well where you might want to manually specify a certain URL for each entry link. So I went about making the following change to the plugin and am going to be submitting the patch to the Rails team as an enhancement.

def entry(record, link = nil)
  @xml.entry do
    @xml.id("tag:#{@view.request.host_with_port},2007:#{record.class}#{record.id}")
    @xml.published(record.created_at.xmlschema) if record.respond_to?(:created_at)
    @xml.updated(record.updated_at.xmlschema) if record.respond_to?(:updated_at)

    yield @xml

    entry_link = link.nil? ? @view.polymorphic_url(record) : link
    @xml.link(:rel => 'alternate', :type => 'text/html', :href => entry_link)
  end
end

Currently, version 0.9.5 is available on wordpress.org. There are two new features that will be included in the 1.0 release which should be available before the end of the year.

If you have been using FeedCache and have any features you would like to see included, please let me know. Also, if you’ve found any bugs or issues with the plugin, let me know that as well so I can fix the problems.

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/feedcache/download/

To get the BETA version, instead of clicking the “Download Plugin” button, click the “Development Version” link that is listed under the “Other Versions” sections. I’ve been testing it out, and I would like some folks to help me test before I update and make the new 0.7 version the newest stable version.

The whole setup of the plugin has changed now that there are multiple sections of feeds so your best bet is to just deactivate the existing plugin and delete the whole /feedcache directory from your /wp-content/plugins directory and just install the new 0.7 as if you had never used it before.

Let me know if you have any trouble installing and/or using it and if the installation instructions aren’t clear enough.

The plugin code is stable at this point, but I’m still tweaking some error checking in the Ruby CRON script. Right now there are a few issues with HTTP timeouts and XML feed parsing that can be improved upon.

Look for the next version of the plugin to be released sometime by next week.

So there were a few issues with v0.2.

I’ve updated some bugs and released v0.3 to those who are testing it for me. Hopefully I’ll have a public release soon.

If you are interested in seeing v0.2 in action, you can visit MMA HQ. Currently MMA HQ is using FeedCache to cache 5 different RSS feeds with the cached listing updated every 30 minutes.

Stay tuned for the public release of the plugin and feel free to email me with any questions or feature requests.