Making The Atom Feed For A Tag in Google Reader Public
Google recently changed it’s sharing functionality in Google Reader to share exclusively with Google+. As part of this change starred and tagged items changed too. Specifically the behavior of their associated ATOM feeds have. The feeds still exist and work in the same way but you no longer have the option to make them public.
For most people this isn’t a problem. But if you want to use one of these feeds to feed another service (such as a Twitter account) you’ll only be able to do so if the feed was made public before the redesign. If your feed wasn’t made public before the redesign you’re stuck.
Or are you?
I recently faced this issue and could not figure out a way around it. That is until I came accross a page in the Google Reader help forum that described a solution. Rather than look through the posts on that page I’ll outline the solution here.
- Log into Google Reader.
- Paste the following JavaScript into the address bar of your browser and hit enter:
javascript:(function(q){var x=new q(),y;x.open("GET","http://www.google.com/reader/api/0/token",false);x.send();y=new q();y.open("POST","http://www.google.com/reader/api/0/tag/edit",false);y.setRequestHeader("Content-Type","application/x-www-form-urlencoded");var o={"s":"user/-/label/"+prompt("Enter tag name to make public"),"pub":"true","T":x.responseText},p=[];for(var k in o)p.push(k+"="+ encodeURIComponent(o[k]));y.send(p.join("&"));alert(y.responseText);})(XMLHttpRequest)(Your browser may prompt you to allow the script to run.)
- In the resulting prompt enter the name of the tag you want to make public and click the enter button.
- Click OK to the next prompt.
That’s all there is to it. To see if it worked log out of Google Reader and go to the following URL:
http://www.google.com/reader/public/atom/user/USERID/label/LABEL
where USERID is the numeric ID associated with your Google account and LABEL is the name of the label used in step 3 above.
Here’s an example of a feed I made public to test if this solution worked:
http://www.google.com/reader/public/atom/user/14018125097206515583/label/d
It’s certainly possible that Google will close this hole at some point but until then have at it.
UPDATE
Newer versions of Firefox have the ability to run JavaScript from the address bar disabled. There is, however, a workaround that allows you to run this scrip.
- After logging into Google Reader open the Scratchpad by selecting Tools->Web Developer->Scratchpad from the menu bar.
- Past the script into the Scratchpad and hit CTRL+R or select Run from the Execute menu or right click and select run from the context menu (any of these solutions will execute the script).
- continue the steps above from step 3.
The script will execute in the Scratchpad the same way I described it would work from the address bar previously.
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