Question

I searched web for few hours but did not find anything so far. So just putting it out here, is there a way that using a link i can create a digg style story? With image, headline and story preview? Is there any api in which can be used in mvc3 or any code out there which does this already? Would appreciate any help in this!

I am putting a bounty on this question. Anyone who can provide me simple asp.net code to get a story from news site using a link, will get the bounty. Thanks!

Answer 1

Altough i’m not familliar with this functionallity in Digg, it sounds a lot like what Facebook also does. As far as I could find their is no pre made code available nor services available, but it shoudn’t be that hard to implement yourself:

1. Download the page source
2. Search for the following tags:
   • <meta name="title"
   • <meta name="discription"
   • <link rel="image_src"
3. Use the values of those elements to build your preview

Because not every website uses these tags, you can, for example, do the following subsitiutions:

• No meta title tag? –> Use the <title> element content.
• No meta description tag? –> Use the, or a part of, the first nicely filled paragraph
• No link image_src? –> Use any of the images on the page

Be creative with the method of substitution to see which method yields the best results.

For a bit more detailt about the tags: http://umairj.com/29/modify-how-the-shared-item-appears-on-facebook/ (It talks about facebook, but is applicable for anyone wanting to implement this kind of functionallity)