RSS

peleg

Hello!

I'm trying to figure out how to make RSS feeds in my site. I mean: actually create these feeds while changes are made.

Well, I have a nice organized DB for that, and I control PHP pretty well, but I know nothing about XML and parsers... so I tried a few things:
a. FeedCreator - an open-source PHP class that helps you make an XML file from your wanted input. It works. The problem is - now the news "source" is a static file, like "peleg.xml", and not a dynamic one - this static file is updated from time to time (for example, when a new post "occurs"), but it still not dynamic...
I know it can be done - there are RSS sources that are ASP files, for example (http://www.notes.co.il/rss.asp?b=191 - this is a Hebrew example I found...) - but I don't know how to make these, and of course I'd like to know how to do it in PHP...

so... if anyone have a single clue, please - I would be grateful. Thanks!

Peleg.

bretticus

I have used a php class called feedcreator. Works great! I think it is the very same one you use as I can see that it outputs to a static file. After it writes the static file, it redirects to that file. However, it is dynamically generated.

However, I found an example with a download link to an simple rss feed creator.

Weedpacket

Ultimately, however, PHP doesn't care whether what it's generating is HTML or RSS or whatever: any and all techniques that can apply to dynamically generating an HTML page in PHP can be applied to generating an RSS file. So the tags have different names and there's a different Content-Type header. That's it; no deep magic. (For instance, there's no need for parsing any XML-related, because parsing is part of reading and you're not reading the RSS, you're writing it.)

NogDog

I agree with Weedpacket: you just need to spend a bit of time learning the RSS protocol, just as you need to learn the HTML protocol to output HTML pages from PHP. And the good news is, the RSS protocol has fewer elements than HTML has, and is pretty specific on how they are used. Here's a sample RSS 2.0 output: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RSS(file_format)#Example-_RSS_2.0

peleg

Thank you very much!

It was very helpful.

If anyone wants my help in building such simple RSS, just notify me...

Peleg.