Yahoo Pipes: Worth a Look - Building the First Pipe
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Before we start building a pipe, you need to be aware that Yahoo Pipes does not work on IE 6. I found this out the hard way. You’ll see the page, but when you try to drag and drop modules onto the editing area, they’ll just disappear. It works in FireFox as long as you’re using the latest version, otherwise it acts flaky.
Anyway, here’s the first page you’re confronted with when you start building your first pipe:
I’ve cut and reduced the image to fit. Now the menu column on the left is what Yahoo refers to as the Library. It lists all of the available modules as well as any pipes you have saved. Yahoo separates the modules into different categories depending on their functions:
- Sources are data sources that return an RSS feed.
- User inputs are input fields that your Pipe’s users fill in at runtime.
- Operators are basic functions like foreach, sort, count, and filter.
- Url modules build and manipulate URLs.
- String modules handle strings.
- Date modules manipulate dates.
Fortunately you get a helpful tool tip when you hover over each module that tells you in a sentence what it does. You’ll usually want to start a pipe by specifying where it will be getting the data. That means you’ll want to grab one of the feed modules, which you find under "Sources," and drag it onto the “canvas,” like so:
As you can see, the module changed; it’s bigger, it changed color, and it now has a “pipe output” section. It’s waiting for you to put in the URL of the RSS feed you want to use. Yahoo helpfully provides a search box for feeds. You can add more feeds using the same module by clicking the plus sign next to the URL. Below, I’ve added five feeds:
The feeds I’ve chosen aren’t particularly large, but there are plenty of feeds online that are nothing short of huge. Of course, if you don’t think you have enough feeds (and since the point of Yahoo Pipes is to connect lots of different feeds), you may want to drag another feed box onto your editing canvas and connect the two modules. You’ll want to use a “Union” box for this, which you’ll find under “Operators.” You click and drag your mouse from the URL modules to the Union module to hook them up. You can really see how pretty the interface is at this point; you’re dragging some lovely blue connectors. Take a look:
At this point you’ll want to filter your pipe. Drag a Filter box over from the Operators. The Filter box lets you block (or permit) items that match certain rules. Here’s an example, hooked up to my pipe:
You can see how easy it would be for someone who is interested in a particular kind of news or trying to stay up to date in a particular field to pick out the stories that would be of most interest. If you have ever searched for something using key words, you can easily set up a filter.
Once you have finished filtering your pipe, you want to connect the filter to the “pipe output” box that appeared when you dragged your first module onto the editing surface. You do that in the same way that you did it with the other connections.
Next: Finishing Your Pipe >>
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