Symphony.

Say I have ten newest entries DS in site A and I want to simply display and link to these in site B. At first thought maybe RSS page in site A then Dynamic DS in site B.

Haven't done this for a while, has anyone a better/newer/cooler method? I don't need any two-way communication functionality in the backend.

That's how I would do it; I always thought it was pretty cool :)

It doesn't have to be exactly RSS, any XML structure that you're comfortable working with should be good enough. Obviously if you use RSS you wouldn't have to create any 'private' / hidden pages.

Just have an admin only page in site A with a DS attached to it, using an xsl:copy-of in the xsl, then in site B a remote datasource that calls this page and appends auth-token=xxx to the URL, using a token taken from an author in site A.

If you use an auth-token as @designermonkey describes, I think you need to do it over SSL to avoid it being visible over the Interwebs.

It doesn't have to be exactly RSS, any XML structure that you're comfortable working with should be good enough

Good point.

Just have an admin only page in site A

It sounds like this isn't necessary since the information is public anyways. DavidOliver makes a valid point about exposing the auth-token.

DavidOliver makes a valid point about exposing the auth-token.

Sure, sometimes this is the case, in other cases two systems might interchange sensitive information - payments, contact information, etc. In these cases having a token is a good idea.

I would take this even further: the symphony auth token will provide access to the entire backend, whereas you only need to control one page: just include an if statement comparing a url-param with a static token, and only do a copy-of when the two match.

Then you could indeed use an SSL layer to make sure the traffic can not be sniffed, but that might be a bit paranoid; in most (of my) use-cases the two servers will reside in the same data-center, and if somebody can sniff traffic there he can probably also access your server directly. If you are sending the information over the internet then ssl is a good idea.

createddutchmen, I think using a url-param and comparing it to a hardcoded password in the XSLT is the best solution since access to the backend is not needed. I have done this in the past to make a very simple password-protected area. Wish I thought of it when replying to munki! Great trick, thanks for the reminder :)

@Lewis yes it is cool but I said cool-er, just wondering if there was something new around.

Well, I didn't need much functionality so just went the RSS route, plus it made me create an RSS that could be attractive for the site. Dynamic DS seemed a lot easier than it used to, didn't have to muck about with the namespace myself. Sweet!

Very interesting method initially from designermonkey, I guess this could be used for two-way interaction between the sites?

[...] in most (of my) use-cases the two servers will reside in the same data-center

In that case, I suppose you'd also need to make sure that the servers are configured to go directly to each other via the data centre's own network rather than via the Internet. (I.e. use the other server's local/private IP address instead of a URL, or configure the hosts file accordingly.)

In my shared hosting you're required to go to the script (local server file path) rather than some URL based path if you want the in-house firewall to protect your data. Is that the kind of thing you mean David?

It's new to me but I had a problem with Dynamic DS on a project a little while ago and that was the problem as no data came through when attempting to use Symphony in the usual mannner.