General description
Yahoo Pipes is a powerful tool for combining content and RSS feeds from around the web without knowing complicated programming languages. You can use Yahoo Pipes by dragging different modules onto the canvas to perform different actions, which are explained below. Once you’ve created your Pipe and shredded its content, you can save and export it using different publishing options. Let’s assume you have a Yahoo Pipes account set up and you’re on the canvas page, ready to create your first Pipe.
Now you will learn what each module does and how you can use them!
Sources
These modules allow you to collect different types of data to build your Yahoo Pipe.
Automatic feed discovery – Identify if a website has an RSS feed.
CSV recovery – Take the data from a CSV file (i.e. an Excel file)
Get information – Take data as XML or JSON files (useful for affiliate product feeds)
Get feed – The most popular module of Yahoo Pipes. Take RSS, Atom and RDF feeds.
Get the site feed – Automatically discovers if the specified website has an RSS feed and captures it if there is.
Flickr – Get images from Flickr based on keywords or a location you specify.
Google base – Get product listings from Google Base
Item Builder – Allows you to rename and restructure different attributes of your data.
Yahoo! Local – Allows you to find local businesses and services and get reviews about them.
Get page – Your chance to “scratch” HTML websites without knowing PHP.
YQL – Allows you to run SQL-like commands to access XML and JSON data.
RSS article creator – Convert a non-RSS feed to an RSS feed by renaming the attributes.
Yahoo! Look for – Allows you to access Yahoo! search results and perform advanced searches.
Input modules – Allows users to specify data to run the pipeline.
Input modules – They are self explanatory and include: text, date, location, number, URL and Private (where only the Pipe author can see the data)
Operators – Operators manipulate and filter data.
Tell – Counts the number of results in the input feed.
Filter – Filter your Yahoo Pipe data based on the settings you specify.
Extractor rental – Examines the input source for a geographic location and generates geographic data (so you can plot it on a map).
Circle – Insert a submodule and run it once for each item in the input feed.
Regex – Use regular expressions to perform advanced “find and replace” on data.
Rename – Rename the elements of the input feed.
Counter – Reverses the order of the input power.
Destination – Sort the input feed according to the elements you specify.
Pull apart – Divides a feed into two identical output feeds.
Subelement – Allows you to extract certain parts from XML sources.
Tail – Allows you to grab the last X items from a feed (where X is the number you specify).
Truncate – Allows you to grab the first X items from a feed (where X is the number you specify).
Union – Merge up to five modules into one source.
Only – Remove duplicate items from a feed so that they are only displayed once.
web service – Allows you to export your Yahoo Pipe to external web services.
Create RSS – Allows you to convert data into RSS feeds by changing the names of items in a drop-down list.
URL modules – Manipulate and control URLs.
URL builder – Manipulate and control URLs.
Chain modules – Allows you to control and manipulate text strings. In English, a string is just a word and a text string is a sentence.
String generator – Allows you to build strings from multiple substrings.
Regex chain – Use regular expressions to find and replace text strings.
Chain replacement – Find and replace strings, easily.
String Tokenizer – split text strings into multiple strings using a specified delimiter.
Sub string – Allows you to search for a specific part of a string.
Term extractor – Select the most important words within a text string.
Translate – Translate from one language to another.
Yahoo! Shortcuts – Put text strings in these categories: place, person, identifier (that is, phone number, email address), organization, event and concept.
Private chain – It is used for sensitive data such as passwords. Only the author of Yahoo Pipe can see this.
Date modules – It allows you to control and manipulate dates.
Date generator – convert text strings into a recognizable date format.
Date formatter – Convert dates and times in different formats.
Module rental – Control and manipulate dates.
Rental builder – converts a description of a place into geographic data (so you can plot it on a map).
Numerical modules – Perform calculations on numbers.
Simple math – A basic calculator that can perform: addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, modulus and powers.
Depraved modules – These should not be used because they have been replaced by new modules.
BabelFish – Replaced with the translation module.
Content analysis module – Replaced by the Term Extractor Module.
For each: Annotations module – Replaced with the loop module.
For each: Replace the module – Replaced with the loop module.
Resume
Now that we’ve covered all the Yahoo Pipes modules, you should have a solid understanding of what you can do with Yahoo Pipes and how you can combine content from all over the web. Yahoo Pipes is ideal for working with data from affiliate product feeds, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, social bookmarking sites, and more. Now it’s your turn to try!
