Contents 1 Simple RSS Feed Aggregator 1.1 Introduction 1.2 How to Download one or many RSS Feeds 1.3 How To Use the RSS Feed File Class 1.4 Software Dependancies 1.5 Download

Simple RSS Feed Aggregator

Introduction

The intentions of this example is to demonstrate how to aggregate RSS feeds using a three step process.

1. Download one or many RSS feeds.
2. Make the downloading of one or many RSS feeds periodic.
3. Use the RSS Feed File Class to markup a RSS feed using XHTML and CSS.

How to Download one or many RSS Feeds

With your favorite text editor edit the get_rss_feeds.pl file, and look for the following lines. my $rss_path = "/path/to/where/rss/feeds/get/downloaded/";
my $config_path = "/path/to/where/rss/feeds/file/is/located/rss_files"; The $rss_path variable is a string that holds the path to where the RSS feeds are copied from the internet, to the server's filesystem. The $config_path variable is a string that holds the filename of the configuration file. The format of the configuration file is comma separated value (CSV), an example of the file format is shown below.

#<RSS Feed URL>,<Filename of RSS Feed>
http://www.slashdot.org/slashdot.rdf,slashdot.rdf
http://blog.heatxsink.com/syndicate/index.xml,heatxsink.rss


So via the sample configuration file above the get_rss_feeds.pl perl script would download two rss feeds, as slashdot.rdf, and heatxsink.rss. The feeds after downloading would be located at whatever path the $rss_path string variable was set to.

To invoke the get_rss_feeds.pl perl script, type the following in a terminal window.

./get_rss_feeds.pl

How To Use the RSS Feed File Class

First you need to require the php file that contains the rssFeedFile class. <?php require ("rss_feed_class.php"); ?> Then within the body of your XHTML/HTML document instantiate the class, the default constructor takes a absolute or relative path, and can also take a URL to an RSS feed.

The code below points to a file that is located on the server where the webpages are being served up. <?php
$rssFeed = new rssFeedFile("rss/nat.rss");
$rssFeed->parse(False);
$rssFeed->ReturnDiv(False, "feedTitle", "feed");
?>


The code below points to a URL of a RSS feed. <?php
$rssFeed = new rssFeedFile("http://blog.heatxsink.com/syndicate/index.xml");
$rssFeed->parse(False);
$rssFeed->ReturnDiv(False, "feedTitle", "feed");
?>


Check the Example and Download Page for the rendered output of the above two examples.

Software Dependancies

• Perl
• PHP
• Cron
• Open Mind (optional)

Download

• Example and Download Page