[RESOLVED] extract URLs from external list and return RSS feed titles

[camcgee]

Hi -- I am still in the very early stages of learning PHP. I'm building a site for a client and they've asked me to create a script that's beyond my current abilities.

I'm trying to figure out whether it's something that I could understand and build in a couple of days or whether I should just move on and hire a subcontractor to code it. I would rather build it myself for the sake of learning, but if it's going to take hours and hours, I'd rather just pay someone and not stress out over it.

Here's what I'm trying to do and where I am:

1. fetch the contents of an external text file

2. examine each line to see if it matches a regex

3. break the line into two parts: a three-digit number and a URL

4. each URL is for an RSS feed, for which I need to fetch the title and description [is there built-in functionality to grab this info?]

5. display the number and the RSS info as HTML

I can get as far as step 3 without any problems but my method for step 4 is getting me nowhere.

Here is the code I have so far:

$lines = file('file.txt');

foreach ($lines as $line) {
if (ereg('^[0-9][0-9][0-9] http://.+' , $line)) {
         $url = (ereg_replace('^[0-9][0-9][0-9] (http://.+)' , '\1' , $line));
         $num = (ereg_replace('^([0-9][0-9][0-9]) http://.+' , '\1' , $line));

   $rss = simplexml_load_file($url);

   foreach($rss->channel as $channel) {
   echo '<h3>' . "$num " . $channel->title . '</h3>';
   echo '<p>' . $channel->description . '</p>';
    }
}

This works for a few of the feeds but for most of them it returns the error "Warning: simplexml_load_file() [function.simplexml-load-file]: I/O warning : failed to load external entity ""

When it is returning the URL in the error, each one has the characters "%0A" on the end.

I also get a "Fatal error: Maximum execution time of 30 seconds exceeded" which is probably because there are a couple hundred URLs to be processed.

Any help or pointers would be much appreciated.

OTOH, if you think I'm just setting myself up for pain, can you suggest a good place to hire a coder to do the job?

Thanks.

[autocolismo]

camcgee wrote:

This works for a few of the feeds but for most of them it returns the error "Warning: simplexml_load_file() [function.simplexml-load-file]: I/O warning : failed to load external entity ""

Check if those urls you have in your file are valid feeds, or they actually exist

camcgee wrote:

I also get a "Fatal error: Maximum execution time of 30 seconds exceeded" which is probably because there are a couple hundred URLs to be processed.

You may ask your server admin to raise that value. Or you could get your code to put the results into some db table and the code refreshes the page on each line you have on your list

[camcgee]

autocolismo wrote:

Check if those urls you have in your file are valid feeds, or they actually exist

Thanks for the advice.

They are all valid feeds -- the original file are being generated by an external application (created by the client) that checks for validity.

If I load them individually by hard-coding the feed's URL into simplexml_load_file(), it works as expected, but when I try to do it with the var $url, they fail.

An example feed is: [FONT="Courier New"]http://feeds.feedburner.com/TikiBarTV[/FONT]

Hardcoding the variables works:

[code=php]

$num = '103';
$url = 'http://feeds.feedburner.com/TikiBarTV';

$rss = simplexml_load_file($url);
foreach($rss->channel as $channel) {
	echo '<h3>' . "$num " . $channel->title . '</h3>';
echo '<p>' . $channel->description . '</p>';
}[/code]

This gives me exactly what I expect.

But once I try to use the script in my original post (with the regex), I get

"Warning: simplexml_load_file(http://feeds.feedburner.com/TikiBarTV%0A) failed to open stream: HTTP request failed! HTTP/1.0 400 You must provide a feed uri"

I don't know where the [FONT="Courier New"]%0A[/FONT] at the end is coming from, but that seems to be the reason that some of the feeds are being shown as invalid.

[autocolismo]

i think you may have a " " (blank space) at the file where you have the list at the end of the urls you use.

So you may have
$url = 'http://feeds.feedburner.com/TikiBarTV ';
intead of
$url = 'http://feeds.feedburner.com/TikiBarTV';

[camcgee]

autocolismo wrote:

i think you may have a " " (blank space) at the file where you have the list at the end of the urls you use.

I examined the origin file and couldn't find any evidence of extra spaces but sure enough $url = rtrim($url) cleared up the problems. Thanks a lot.

[bradgrafelman]

Don't forget to mark this thread resolved.