AP Webfeed Parser

I've mentioned on the group before that I've been working on a parser for FeedAPI (Drupal 6.x) to automate feeding AP Webfeeds into my site.

Well, after working with a developer, I have a working model now. It relies heavily on cck, ctools, eParser, Feed Mapper, and FeedAPI to get the job done, but it does work. It needs further development though.

Right now it allows me to create a feed in AP Exchange, and import those items into my site as native nodes. It currently imports the first photo, the body text, the management ID (for update purposes) the updated time, the medialink and mediacaption, and the feednid into the node.

I'm using it on our site to aggregate data from the AP round the clock so that our national news doesn't have to be managed by an editor and they can focus on our local content.

There are some hiccups though. I'm having a harder time parsing out embargoed stories. Not that it seems difficult, but I'm not real sure I'm using the metadata from the AP correctly. I'm working with them now to get that figured out.

While I don't have time to provide any kind of tech support for this parser, I am willing to provide the files if anyone would like them, and I'd sure be willing to accept some help in improving it. I brought in a developer to work on this, who has since vanished, and I'm not an expert at all in parsers. If anyone would like to lend a hand in getting it right or making it better (more photo support, etc...) I'm more than willing to share.

I don't have any plans on setting this up as a contributed project right now, due to the limited scope of it, and the fact that I'm doubtful I could maintain a project well at all.

As of right now my site has about 15 feeds we're importing from the AP, and it's providing round the clock updated news very well, so I'm pretty happy with the progress we've made so far. It's not the easiest thing to set up, but once it's working, it really adds a lot of new content to your news site without any further effort.

Once I can figure out the parser code to remove embargoed stories, or get a hand with it, it's going to make my life a lot easier.