Update: SharePoint Online RSS Viewer now supports external feeds
[warning_box]A newer version of the web part is available at Updated Release: RSS Feed Web Part for Office 365[/warning_box]
Back in August, I released a RSS Feed Web Part for Office 365, as the SharePoint RSS feed web part doesn’t work in SharePoint Online. Today I’m releasing a better updated version. Why? What has changed? Where can you get it and how do you install and use it? Read below
Which known errors existed?
People reported that they weren’t able to use the web part with SharePoint Online internal feeds, e.g. the RSS feed of a document library. After I got all the details needed to reproduce that error, I found the source of it quite quickly:
In my web part, I’m using the free jQuery library zRSSFeed, which itself is providing its functionality through using the Google Feed API. It calls this API to receive the feed data in JSON format, which it then parses and outputs. For SharePoint Online RSS feeds this fails, as the Google Feed API naturally can’t accessed secured content. Thus, only public feeds could be used with this first version of the web part!
What has changed in the new version?
Most importantly (the reason for this fix), you can now use SharePoint Online RSS feeds as well! For this to work, I had to modify the zRSSFeed library slightly. If a feed originates from SharePoint Online (identified through the same domain as the one the script is run on, as well as _layouts/listfeed.aspx in the URL), then some custom code is run instead of the zRSSFeed default code that calls the Google Feed API. I simple fetch the RSS data, parse it into a jQuery object, and do the (more or less) same output as the default behaviour.
In addition to that, I added some cleanup code. Whenever the feature is deactivated, the support libraries that are installed as part of this solution are removed. Thus, do not reference these files anywhere else if you aren’t absolutely sure that you won’t deactivate the solution!
Where can I download it?
Get the latest version at Updated Release: RSS Feed Web Part for Office 365
How do I install it?
You can follow the same instruction as in the previous posting. If you have the previous version installed, simply deactivate it first, upload the newer version of the solution, and activate it again.
Is anything else planned?
There’s a good chance I’ll release another update in the coming weeks. I’ve received some feedback regarding some design improvements, if time permits I’ll start working on them soon.
I’ve got some ideas how to improve the web part
As the source is available, feel free to make your own customisations. Alternatively, contact me with any suggestions that you have
Nice, thanks! Any way to have it parse a secure RSS feed that is NOT Sharepoint Online RSS? (Maybe that’s an enhancement request: to allow us to customize keyword criteria that triggers circumventing the Google Feed API method.)
Do you have any details on that? E.g., how does one generally authenticate to access the feed?
Will look at ways to switch between “parsing methods”, thanks for the suggestion!
Thanks for the reply and consideration. In my case, it’s a unique URL string as security method, e.g. FreeMyFeed.com
Of course now I realize that use case is faulty, since FreeMyFeed doesn’t need authentication. My real use case was similar, but requires either username/password or IP address authentication (+ unique string), neither of which can be provided through this. So I think my request was premature. Sorry about that. Thanks again for this web part!
Thanks for the update! Will still consider an option to select how a feed should be fetched anyway, to cover all possible cases.
hii when i want to activa the webpart i get the folowwing error:
“The file you imported is not valid. Verify that the file is a Web Part description file (.dwp) and that it contains well-formed XML.”
Any ideas? Thank you in advance
Sorry my fault! I uploaded the .wsp file in the web parts section and not in the solution section! Thank you for the great RSS viewer it’s a shame that Microsoft doesn’t provide one that works! By the way don’t you have suck a file for facebook & twitter?
Thank you!!!!
Glad to hear that you managed to sort it out.
When you say facebook & twitter, do you mean adding twitter/facebook “feeds” to SharePoint? Here’s a posting that explains it for twitter: http://www.jasperoosterveld.com/2012/04/sharepoint-and-twitter.html
Think I’ve seen something similar for facebook as well, but can’t find it right now
I still get the annoying message “Only view secured content” warning with the new web part. I use Office 365 and even without including a rss feedusrl, jst using the web part, it causes warnings that thier is non-secure content.
I dont think your new code is working?