Yahoo Pipes 10 Minute Guide
From Kb
Contact Article Author | Blog of Article Author | FirstPartners.net Home | LinkedIn profile of Author
Yahoo Pipes
Picture 1
Image:/blog/wp-content/uploads/2007/02/1-main-pipes-screen.jpg
Picture 2 Image:Http://www.firstpartners.net/blog/wp-content/uploads/2007/02/2-new-pipe.jpg
Picture 3 Image:Http://www.firstpartners.net/blog/wp-content/uploads/2007/02/3-fetch-url.jpg
Picture 4 Image:Http://www.firstpartners.net/blog/wp-content/uploads/2007/02/4-url-in-fetch-box.jpg
Picture 5 Image:Http://www.firstpartners.net/blog/wp-content/uploads/2007/02/5-url-linked-to-output.jpg
Picture 6 Image:Http://www.firstpartners.net/blog/wp-content/uploads/2007/02/6-pipe-output.jpg
Yahoo Pipes in 10 easy steps.
Yahoo Pipes allows you to take RSS Feeds (Website summaries) and combine , filter, sort and otherwise manipulate them according to what you
need. This sample shows you how to do this, based on several feeds from the Iona [1] website.
Disclaimer: I have no connection to IONA, but I do want to read all their Bloggers feeds in one place.
LINK BACK TO BLOG ENTRY TO LEAVE QUESTIONS OR COMMENTS
1. Open your web browser and Login to Yahoo Pipes at http://pipes.yahoo.com/ . You can use a standard Yahoo ID (e.g. from Flickr, or Yahoo
IM)
2. Click 'My Pipes' on the top left of the page . You should see the following screen (Image 1)
3. Click on 'Create a New Pipe'. It should be in the middle of the screen towards the top. You should now see something like the following (Image 2)
4. At the top left of the screen is a blue menu option 'Sources' , with a couple of different places we can pull information from (e.g. The
results of a Yahoo Seach, A Google Base Search, Flickr Photographs). The one we're interested in is 'Fetch' , which can pull information
from any Web Address (url).
Drag and drop the 'Fetch' box into the 'grid' area on the right. The main part of your screen should look something like the following: (image 3)
5. Now we will add the Web Addresses (URL's) that we want to pull the information from. We'll get these from this page on Iona's web site
[2] . Luckily, the blogs / web pages we want to combine also come in the RSS format (the orange buttons on this
page). All blogs and many web pages have this 'RSS' option, and it makes it easier to combine the information in pipes.
To find the URl, we right-click on the orange button on the IONA site, and select 'Copy Link Location'.
6. Back in Pipes Again , we paste this RSS link into the 'url' field on the Fetch box. We also click the '+' sign at the top left of the
box, so that pipe gives us the option to enter a 2nd URL. Our Fetch box now looks like this:
(Image 4).
7. We repeat step 6, and copy the 8 other RSS feeds into our fetch box.
8. At the bottom of the Fetch box there should be blue circle. Drag this blue circle and drop onto the 'Pipe Output' box. Your screen should
now look something like this. (Image 5).
9. Clicking on 'Pipe Output' (grey tab at bottom left of screen) fetches the information that we have just selected. The output from your
newly created pipe should be at the bottom of the screen and look something like this : (Image 6)
10. That's it! We've created a Pipe. To allow the world to see your new create, Select 'Save' then 'Publish' (both grey tabs on the top
right of the screen). We've published a cleaned up version of the Iona Feed for you to view at:
