RSS Feeds for DeviantART Notifications

I thought it would be handy if I could get the various DA notifications (deviantWATCH, new comments on your deviations, etc) as a RSS feed, so I created a PHP script that can log into a DA account and generate the feed. It creates three feeds –

  1. New deviations from your deviantWATCH (with thumbnails!).
  2. Messages (e.g. journal entries, comments on your deviations, etc).
  3. All of the above.

This way you can add the feed(s) to a feed reader and be notified automatically when there’s something new in your DeviantART account. It also saves time, as you don’t need to log in just to check for new messages.

You can download the script and set it up on your own site (you will need a server that has PHP 5 and cURL). See “readme.txt” included in the archive for detailed installation instructions.

If you don’t have a site and don’t feel like investing $6 (or so) in some shared hosting, take a look at DAFeed.w-shadow.com. This is where I’ve set up a modified version of the script that can handle multiple users. You can create a feed for your DeviantART account just by filling two text fields and clicking a button.

The downside is there’s no warranty it won’t go down randomly and without prior notice 😛

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29 Responses to “RSS Feeds for DeviantART Notifications”

  1. blacksnoopy says:

    i’ve got this error:
    Parse error: syntax error, unexpected ‘&’, expecting T_VARIABLE or ‘$’ in the_dir/includes/dauser.php on line 140

  2. White Shadow says:

    You probably have an old version of PHP. The script requires PHP 5.

  3. blacksnoopy says:

    Yep, you’re right. It’s 4.4.7..

  4. blacksnoopy says:

    Now I am with PHP5 and it’s working.
    Thanks.

  5. White Shadow says:

    I’m glad you got it sorted out.

  6. mojaam says:

    Yep, this is much needed! DA is one of the slowest websites, they stay in the stone age and never change with the times.

  7. White Shadow says:

    I wouldn’t really expect websites to become faster “with the times”. The trend seems to be towards more embedded media (large files), which obviously slows down browsing.

    Personally, I wrote the script because with my crappy connection loading the image-heavy DA takes forever. This way I can put the script on my server (which has an uplink that’s an order of magnitude faster) and only download the few kilobytes of the RSS feed once in a while.

  8. parry says:

    Are there any free host’s I could set this up on?

  9. White Shadow says:

    There probably are. Google “free php hosting” and see what comes up.

  10. T says:

    Thank you for this! I’ve been looking for a DA RSS feed solution for a while. Also, I was looking at your PHP, and your comments are really nice and thorough!

  11. DStatic says:

    Any chance you have updated this for the new deviantwatch?

  12. White Shadow says:

    I updated it last week and was under the impression that it worked fine. I’ve gotten all the latest notifications correctly (using the hosted version).

  13. DStatic says:

    Super nice! I will recheck my setup and ensure I have it going correctly. Thank you for sharing such an AWESOME resource that should be built in to DeviantWatch by default.

  14. thinsoldier says:

    DAFeed.w-shadow.com not working for me. I’ll have a look at the code and see if I can be any help.

    I built one of these myself before their last major update. I thought the revamped
    devwatch system would have been a major improvement and I wouldn’t need the feed anymore but I was WRONG.

    I have almost 2,000 un-viewed deviations on my devwatch list now. An rss feed would be so much better than having to log in. I wouldn’t even care if every other entry in the rss feed was an advert

  15. White Shadow says:

    The hosted version still works fine for me; not sure about the downloadable code. Let me know if you figure out what the actual error/bug is.

  16. thinsoldier says:

    You are right. The hosted version does work but only for the feed that shows both messages and devwatch. The devwatch only feed comes up empty.

  17. White Shadow says:

    Actually, I checked and fixed the downloadable version, too. Not sure about the different feeds; I only use the combined one myself.

  18. Mathieu says:

    Are there plans for an update for dA v7 ?

    Thanks!

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