A note from Mark Miller: This is a response to an article that Ming Fung Yong wrote on creating graphs from a SharePoint RSS feed. One of the problems with the RSS reader web part is that it can’t consume authenticated feeds. Ron Koval left an extended comment to Ming’s article, which I think deserves wider distribution.
Guest Author: Ron Koval
I could not get the admin to enable Anonymous Read Access, as believed to be the problem with not being able to access authenticated feeds. I discovered a work around, using SharePoint Designer.
The key is that SharePoint Designer has in the Data Source Library, under Server-side Scripts a “Connect to a script or RSS Feed” that has four different options to configure authentication. I was able to get the “Save this username and password in the data connection” option to work. Here are the steps:
- Open the SP site you want to place the chart in SharePoint Designer
- In the “Data Source Library”, under “Server-side Scripts” (you may need to expand this item) click on “Connect to a script or RSS Feed…”, this opens up a “Data Source Properties” window
- In the General tab, create a “Name” for your RSS feed
- In the Source tab, HTTP method should already be “HTTP Get” with data command “Select”; then paste the URL (from the RSS view of your source data list) in “Select Connection Info, Enter the URL to a server-side script:”
- In the Login tab select “Save this username and password in the data connection” and enter a valid User name and Password in the entry boxes (note: I tried the option “Use Windows authentication” which would be better, but it didn’t work for me; also I was working on the network the same as the server so my User name did not need the trailer @zzz.com)
- Click “OK”
- The name for your data source should show up under the Server-side Scripts, from its pull down menu select “Show Data” (if don’t get the rss folder, there is still a problem getting the RSS feed)
- Scroll down to “Item” and select “title” and while holding “Ctrl” select “description so that only those two items are selected (“link” should not be selected)
- In the pull down menu for “Insert Selected Fields as …” click on “Multiple Item View” which will create and place the RSS data in the preview window
- Place you cursor over the “WebPartPages:DataFormWebPart” to click hold and drag it to one of the conventional columns of the other web parts of your site
- At the top most tool bar under “File” click “Save” and then “Exit” SharePoint Designer
- Refresh your original site (you should see the RSS feed data)
- Under “Site Actions” click “Edit Page”
- In your RSS feed data web part, under edit, select “Modify Shared Web Part”
- Click on the “XSL Editor” and replace the script with the bar.xsl (or the other one for the pie chart) provided by Ming and click “Save”
- Click “OK” (the chart should appear) then “Exit Edit Mode”
Note the web part does not have a title or a pull down menu but that can be fixed back in the “Web Part Editor” under “Appearance”, “Chrome Type” change from “None”.
One thing to keep in mind, when others go to this site, they will be viewing this web part with the RSS feed via your login and password. Should you change your password, the RSS feed will not be available until you go back into SharePoint Designer and change the Properties of your named scripted RSS feed.
If anybody has any insight as to why the “Use Windows Authentication” option doesn’t work for this SharePoint Designer scripted RSS feed, I’d sure like to hear from you or see an additional reply posted.
Ron K
Guest Author: Ron Koval
EE, Digital Signal Processing, Robotics Applications, Telecommunications Systems, Manufacturing Automation and Project & Executive Management
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