Exactly. This will be a feature that some hubs can offer, but it shouldn't be part of the spec.
On Tue, Oct 20, 2009 at 9:59 AM, Ravi Pinjala <[email protected]> wrote: > > I don't really see why this has to be explicitly defined in the spec. > Can't the hub just publish a feed (at some arbitrary hub-specific URL) > that combines any subset of the feeds that the hub watches, and let > clients subscribe to that? They might want to require authentication, of > course, but I'm still not seeing why this requires special support in > the protocol. > > --Ravi > > igrigorik wrote: > > Right, so how does the smart hub aggregate the feeds? Does it then > > have to crawl to find the list? That wouldn't be very useful. Having > > said that... > > > > +1 For 'smart, aggregating hub generating a synthetic feed' > > +1 For XRD discovery of the firehose endpoint. > > > > Thinking a bit more about the firehose, what about making it more > > flexible. Specifically, if we treat 'firehose' as any bundle of feeds > > (all, or some), then a hub could define multiple firehose streams. For > > example, at PostRank we classify feeds by topic, so if someone wanted > > to subscribe to "Technology", we could expose that as a firehose so > > the user doesn't have to subscribe to every feed in that topic. In > > essence, a firehose stream is then any bundle of feeds. > > > > This may be overloading the hub spec but the overall mechanics would > > be: > > - A (super)user can declare a firehose endpoint > > - A (super)user is then able to add or remove subscriptions from the > > firehose to create arbitrary aggregation streams > > - A subscriber uses XRD to discover the available aggregation streams > > - Firehose with 'all' feeds is a special case of the above, where all > > feeds are present > > > > This definitely adds more complexity into the hub... The alternative > > is of course for the publisher to create a syndicated feed and publish > > that directly as a standalone feed. Still trying to weight the up/ > > downsides in my head, but want to put it out there as an idea. > > > > -------- > > Ilya Grigorik > > postrank.com > > > >
