Views Rss - How to set pager options / items to display via URL argument

Question

I have a RSS feed being built by the Views RSS module. I can configure the pager to display a certain number of items; however, some consumers of my feed only want a few of my latest items from my feed. So I need to pass a limit in the URL to the number of items in my feed. something like this:

www.mywebsite.com/rsslatestnews/50 - For 50 items.
or
www.mywebsite.com/rsslatestnews/2 - For 2 Items.

I've tried implementing the hooks:

• hook_views_pre_build
• hook_views_post_build
• hook_views_pre_execute
• hook_views_post_execute
• hook_views_pre_render
• hook_views_post_render

To no avail, I think the RSS Views module is in some way skipping the typical order views hooks are triggered.

My question is this:

Which hook can I use to set the limit of items displayed by my RSS view?

Answer 1

/**  
 * Implements hook_views_query_alter.
 *  
 * If we have an rss feed view we need to set pager settings from url.  
 * If no pager number specified in the url do nothing and use view pager   settings.
 * Otherwise get the items_per_page options from the first argument in the url.  
 */

function rss_feed_length_views_query_alter(&$view, &$query) {

  $rss_views = array(
    'rss',
  );

  if (in_array($view->name, $rss_views)) {
    $limit = arg(1);
    if ($limit !== NULL) {
      $view->set_items_per_page($limit);
    }
  }
}

SUGGESTED IMPROVEMENT:

"i'd have used GET parameters rather than path elements - since it's not a different resource, rather it's an option"

I'll accept as an answer anything that implements the suggested improvement. :)