Going totally mad with the action stream docs and tags. I can't figure out what attributes MTStreamActionVar takes, for instance.
What I want do is this:
In a sidebar, list the last three to five streams from flickr amazon wishlist (can anyone do the amazon shopping list?) newsvine digg smugmug
or some combination of those.
I would like these ordered by stream -- all flickrs, then all amazons, etc.
The amazon shopping list would be a handy reminder of stuff piled up for later purchase (maxed out cards is one possible reason why you'd want to do this ...)
Anyone? Would be very, very grateful for help, pointers to documentation, something.
Reported on Movable Type 4.2
The MTStreamActionVar takes all sorts of input, and it all depends on the particular variables available for the stream and crashes out if you request a variable that isn't associated with the particular stream it is accessing!
If you look at [this example](http://www.richardbenson.co.uk/2008/08/varying-display-of-action-stre.html), the second block of code contains an example of using MTStreamActionVar. I've had to put the call to MTSAV in an MT:if to top it from breaking. In that example steam uses a var called "description" but googlereader has an "annotation" field and not a "description" field. So asking for "description" on a googlereader action will cause a template error.
As far as collecting all your streams by type, a modification of [this example](http://www.richardbenson.co.uk/2008/08/collating-action-streams.html) should do that, or maybe [Mark Pasc's Order plugin](http://markpasc.org/code/mt/order/) could do it (not used it yet myself).
Many thanks, Richard. But just to be clear: I should, therefore, have a look at the feeds from each of these services and see exactly what they're putting out? Is that the way you know whether to use "annotation" or "description"? I did see that very example, and tried that code. What I couldn't follow was when to use annotation and when to use description.
I also can't figure out why the ASAmazon plugin, installed as instructed, won't pull a damn thing from my wishlist. I may have enemies, but not _that_ many ... :-)
But honestly I can't believe that something so incredibly useful doesn't have easily accessible documentation.
The documentation looks like it's getting there, but isn't it more fun to play and break stuff anyway? :)
The only way to know is to look in the perl for what fields it's extracting for each action. /plugins/ActionStreams/config.yaml contains most services, look from line 429 onwards and it's the last bit of code for each section that tells you the fields and field names that are being pulled out. e.g. goodreads:
xpath:
foreach: //item
get:
title: title/child::text()
url: link/child::text()
created_on: pubDate/child::text()
modified_on: pubDate/child::text()
by: author_name/child::text()
That means you can reference "title", "url", "created_on", "modified_on" and "by" using MtStreamActionVar. I think "title" and "url" are the only ones you are guranteed to get in every stream.
I would guess that the Amazon one isn't working as Amazon have updated their HTML, look at the plugin and look at the source of your wishlist page and see if you can find what the plugin is looking for.
I've made a list of all the fields the default action stream plugin pulls out, let me know if it's any help!
[Action Stream field list](http://www.richardbenson.co.uk/2008/09/action-stream-field-list.html)
Oh boy! Brilliant stuff!