# Custom feed items

**URL:** <https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/custom-feed-items/135479>\
**Category:** Rails\
**Created:** [April 22, 2008, 4:28pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/custom-feed-items/135479 "2008-04-22T16:28:51Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![andy](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/a/aeb1de/32.png) [@andy](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/andy)\
**Post date:** [April 22, 2008, 4:28pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/custom-feed-items/135479/1 "2008-04-22T16:28:51Z")

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Hello. I’m hoping someone can point me to a recipe or example of a  
custom feed being fetched for some identifier, like a user ID.

I’d like to be able to provide custom feeds by user. In my  
application, user’s have memberships. If they add the feed address  
(after being authenticated) to a web-based reader a la Google Reader,  
when the feed updates, they’ll see relevant feed items for their  
memberships.

I have a custom feed from InfoQ like this, and it looks like they use  
a token in the URL.

token=DGv3pieWCwikfGf00D6ZwjfAkeEcXDvkx

Is that a good approach? The feed item titles and descriptions are  
behind authentication, but they aren’t necessarily sensitive. It’s  
more about being customized than about security, like InfoQ.

I’m assuming I’d want to generate a token for each user, then each GET  
request would include their token. I’d also want to be able to fetch  
any new feed items relatively soon after they came in. I don’t see  
this being very server intensive.

BTW, I’ve already got the feed rxml in place, just need to customize  
it.

Thanks.