5. Data Structure Modifications

5.1 Action Applications Node Table

A Action Applications Node Table is introduced. The table contains information about remote Action Applications installations to which a local node has a trusting relationship. The trusting relationship is the precondition to install inter node article feeds.

The table is called nodes. It contains these fields:

• name - this is the remote node name as shown in the admin interface. Primary Key. Example: GreenNet
• server_url - this is the URL of the node's getxml.php3 program. Example: http://aa.gn.apc.org/admin/getxml.php3
• password - the password used when the local and the remote node talk to each other

5.2 Incoming External Feeds Table

All inter node feeds are controlled by the external feeds table.

The table is called external_feeds. The table has one row for each incoming feed. The fields and their meanings are:

• feed_id - a unique id for the feed (primary key).
• slice_id - the slice id of the local slice which receives the feed
• node_name - the name of the remote node which sends the feed
• remote_slice_id - the id of the remote slice from which the feed is to come
• user_id - the local user id which was used to establish the feed (is not changed after feed creation)
• newest_item - the timestamp of the newest item we have got from the remote node

5.3 Incoming External Feeds Categories Table

The table contains remote categories used with external feeds.

It is called ef_categories. Each incoming feed has its own set of categories.

The fields are:

• category - the category name as plain text.
• category_id - the id of the category at the remote Action Applications installation.
• feed_id - the incoming feed to which the category belongs; points into the external_feeds table, field feed_id.
• target_category_id - local category id of a category into which the items are fed. If this is an empty string, items belonging to the category are not requested from the feeding node.
• approved - if 1, incoming articles will get into the approved bin. If 0, they are fed into the holding bin. Default value is 0

5.4 Outgoing External Feed Permissions

The table contains permission settings for outgoing external feeds on a per slice basis.

The table is named ef_permissions.

Its fields are:

• slice_id - The slice id of the slice this permission belongs to.
• node - The node, as in table nodes , field name, to which the permission is granted. If the field is empty, permission is granted to all nodes.
• user - The user id of the user to whom the permission is granted. This should be a user id on the remote node - the user does not necessarily have to exist on the local node. Thus, this is neither an email address nor a ldap dn but rather a login name. The field can also contain an empty string; this means that access is granted to all users of a node.

5.5 Items table

The items table needs a new field:

externally_fed - if the item came in through an external feed, the name of the node which fed it is stored here. Name according to table nodes , field name.