Yahoo Pipes is a free online service that lets you remix popular feed types and create data mashups using a visual editor. The visual editor is a key component as it, theoretically, makes the service accessible to users who have little to no programming knowledge.
In practice, this means that you can use Pipes to pick a few feeds or APIs to retrieve data from, set up rules for processing the data that is provided by those feeds, prompt for user input in your processing, and then output the processed results as another feed or object format for use in your own applications. In the simplest case, you can apply some straightforward rules to a feed and then subscribe to the end result.
Furthermore, the one thing which differentiates Yahoo Pipes from other similar tools such as PopFly is the innovative user interface that is employed by the tool. It provides a simple drag-and-drop user interface to create a variety of Pipes.
You may drag and drop these modules to the screen’s layout area. Lines are used to connect modules together (i.e., using the output of one module as the input for another). The editor includes buttons that allow you to work with Pipes, such as create a new one, save your work, create a copy of the currently open Pipe, and view/edit properties of a Pipe.
The screen’s bottom portion is a debugger area that provides feedback. The debugger allows you to step through your modules one at a time and view the data at each step — allowing you to easily track down any issues or problems that may occur. The editor uses a tabbed interface, so you can work on multiple Pipes at one time — each opened within its own tab.
A simple example of a Pipe is using an RSS feed as the data source (Source module). Each data item in the RSS feed can be processed in a loop (Operators module). Each data item in the loop may be used as an input for a Yahoo! search (Source module). The output of the Yahoo! search using data items from the RSS feed is the output of the Pipe. The Pipe output may be consumed as RSS or JavaScript Object Notation (JSON). In fact, you may publish the Pipe for others to use. This is a simple example, but it does provide a peek at its functionality.
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