Ability to regularly import full reports automatically via RSS feed / Ability to simply share deployments

[Nhorning]

Original title: Automatically mark categories from RSS

RSS feeds broadcast from Ushahidi deployments tag incidents with categories. For instance:

Human Trafficking

However, if this feed is added into a second deployments feed tab, the category tags are ignored. If the incident report form would simply automatically mark the boxes based on the existing category tags from the RSS feed, this would create a very simple and easy to control method of sharing data between deployments.

While we have other methods for sharing data between deployments, its still worth extracting as much info as possible from the RSS feed.

[heatherleson]

Problem Definition - Provide the capability to share RSS feeds across various deployments.

More Details: Neil has multiple concurrent deployments. He would like to share incident report RSS feeds with the complete details (including categories etc). This sharing ability used to be available in Ushahidi but was removed. The request is to renew the love for sharing data and reports between deployments.

[Nhorning]

To put this more succinctly. All the data necessary to make reports is contained in the RSS output of a deployment. Why not make it easy to automatically import this data into a 2nd deployment?

[jetherton]

That's what the CSV upload/download is for on Ushahidi.

On 08/24/2012 03:41 AM, Nhorning wrote:

To put this more succinctly. All the data necessary to make reports is contained in the RSS output of a deployment. Why not make it easy to automatically import this data into a 2nd deployment?

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Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub https://github.com/ushahidi/Ushahidi_Web/issues/623#issuecomment-7996938.

[rjmackay]

As far as I'm aware, RSS feeds are still available. There used to be sharing between deployments in core, handled through the API rather than RSS. This is now a plugin packaged with core.. but still works the same.

I'm also working on some more well integrated sharing functionality for a custom deployment, which should be open source after launch.

@Nhorning is there still a use case not fulfilled by the existing code here? If so we need more detail.

[Nhorning]

Hi, everyone and thanks for the response.

I've tried the sharing plugin on my own deployment, It stopped working as soon as I switched to https, by the way, but that's a separate issue. It doesn't actually give you the reports from the other site. It gives you an overlay of the reports from the other site. This could obviously be quite useful in some instances, but it is not the same functionality as actually sharing reports between sites. It is impossible to filter the overlaid reports by category, for instance.

The CVS upload/download, is also quite useful, but requires the frequent manual input of downloading from one site and uploading to the other. This is possible but not ideal.

The ability to import reports from a second site's RSS feed would allow for a constant automatic importing of reports, much like the upload/download function, but continuously and automatically.

Use case : My Deployment, is Nepalmonitor.org. I'm working with other organisations, including inseconline.org and http://un.org.np/resources/maps. Nepalmonitor.org incorporates reports from both of these organizations, making it a one stop site for Human Rights and Security info. However, it would also be ideal for both of these organizations (for usability and internal organizational reasons), to have their own dedicated deployment. Daily CVS uploads would fulfill this use case, and might be viable over the short term as a demonstrator. But this is much less practical over the long term if for instance, I am in the field doing data security trainings and/or publicizing Nepal Monitor to Human Rights Defenders. It would be better if I could set multiple organisations up with their own deployment, and then simply and automatically import their data via their RSS feeds. This would free me up to deal with other aspects.

It would perhaps be best to write a simple plugin for this, but I don't currently have the skill set. Thanks for listening :)

[Nhorning]

I took a look at the plugin you're already working on Jmackay, It looks like it might to the job, but it won't work on my deployment yet. I assume this is because it isn't finished, so good luck. I'll probably end up using it.
However, I still think importing through RSS could prove to be a simple and effective implementation in some instances. Please consider it.

[rjmackay]

OK. Lets stop talking about this in terms of RSS feeds. The RSS feed doesn't contain all the ushahidi data, I'm not even sure its full GeoRSS. This could be done fairly easily through the API.. and something like John Etherton's api library to work with the API. I'll edit the description on this ticket to describe the feature request a bit more.

I'm working on a project doing something similar to this, so I'll share my work as its ready. I'm not importing remote reports as full reports.. but they're listed on the map and the reports listing. They're not editable as the update form the remote site always overwrites.

[rjmackay]

Potentially you might want to try out the simple groups plugin too.. it provides separate admin ui's for different user roles, but within one deployment.

[Nhorning]

Hi there. I'm sorry, but I'm not ready to stop talking about RSS feeds. The RSS might not include all the report data, but it's enough to data produce a complete report with. I've posted the top of my feed below. As you can see there, It has the description, the links, the GPS coordinates, and the categories. If I import this feed back into ushahidi, It uses the link, the description, and the GPS, but it doesn't do anything with the category tags.

Forget this as a way to share data between deployments for a second, and think of this as an RSS import issue. Let's suppose that instead of setting up INSEC with their own deployment, I simply convince them to include categories in their existing RSS feed. This is a real possibility and would, importantly, require far less procedural adjustment on their part. If I imported that adjusted feed, I would still have to go through each item and manually mark all the categories. That's frustrating.

Now there might be all kinds of reasons I'm not aware of to implement this or not. So, please take this as a feature request rather than a demand, and please don't take it as a sign of spite or stubbornness when I re-adjust the title to reflect that request more accurately. Thanks again for your attention to this.

I did try the simple groups plugin a few months ago, unsuccessfully. I'll take another look at it.

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<?xml version="1.0"?>

https://www.nepalmonitor.org/ Tue, 28 Aug 2012 05:58:52 GMT Incident feed for Nepal Monitor Ushahidi Platform ``` https://www.nepalmonitor.org/reports/view/882 Sun, 26 Aug 2012 23:36:00 GMT https://www.nepalmonitor.org/reports/view/882 ``` 27.134 85.4386 WHRD Related / Gender Based Violence PROTEST PROGRAM Trusted Reports INSEC WOMEN SUBJECT TO SEXUAL ABUSE ``` ---

[Nhorning]

@Himalayantechies are working with us for the month of April, and hopefully be able to implement this.

[PoPoutdoor]

About the RSS (link above) category issue:

FYI:

http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nepalmonitor.org%2Findex.php%2Ffeed%2F;ss=1 http://validator.w3.org/feed/docs/rss2.html#ltcategorygtSubelementOfLtitemgt

Multi category tags there, does the RSS importer program use ALL category data? Is there any chance the RSS import code support only one category tag and skip category tag data on error?

[Nhorning]

@Popoutdoor: That's what I'm suggesting. As far as I can tell, those category tags embedded in the RSS feed are not being used for anything by Ushahidi. If they could be used by the RSS importer, and tags that threw an error were skipped, then that would add a very simple way to import the daily output of an Ushahidi deployment into another deployment.

[Nhorning]

Btw, @rjmackay Kate Cummings (your colleague?) was in Nepal recently, and give me a short demo of the Simplegroups plugin. It looked very promising, but perhaps would require more integration between agencies than my feature request here. She also mentioned a plugin that would forward reports individually. That would be good, but require active participation on the part of the forwarding deployment. My feature request here would allow one deployment to passively import data (which is public after all) from another deployment easily and on a daily basis.

[PoPoutdoor]

Just check related file code, the category tag is not handled (no code) in views for imported news feed.

That's why category data is missing after imported.

[Nhorning]

I thought I should mention that HT modified my deployment to fulfil this feature request. I'll try and issue a pull request asap.