3 replies to this topic

[KuroiShi]

I am interested in making a homepage for personal use. I want to make it have links to all my daily stops (I.E. Stanks forums ) some XML feeds, (Rootsecure, Bugtraq, Slashdot) and if possible, my favorite web comics. (MegaTokyo, Penny Arcade)

Nick84, from looking at Rootsecure, it seems you have some experiance with RSS Syndication.

I'm open to Ideas, but since I'm learning PHP At the moment, a PHP Powered solution would be favorable.

Thanks,

-KuroiShi

[nick84]

Nick84, from looking at Rootsecure, it seems you have some experiance with RSS Syndication.  

Yep sure do, not to pimp out my own feeds but:
http://www.rootsecur...?p=rss_xml_feed - Rootsecure.net's main homepage feed
http://www.rootsecur...cnews_xml_feeds - Feeds provided by Rootsecure.net for all the top security news sites that do not have their own

Im afraid all my feeds are done in Perl though - (shares the same basic concepts as php)

Are you looking at making them as well for the sites that don’t have them? - “and if possible, my favorite web comics”

If your ok with coding in Perl then I can help you out - just email/pm/post a message here with more details on exactly what your trying to do / the code you have so far otherwise I’ll try and help you out with php but I have very limited experience with it.

Also just found the following links with info on RSS in php:
http://www.devscript...e.php?script=40
http://magpierss.sourceforge.net/

[KuroiShi]

Actually, Perl is my language of choice... I'm just learning PHP at the moment and am really liking it.

[nick84]

Well im that case here are the basic steps:

1. Decide how to implement it - if you are going to be making your own feeds for sites that don’t have them so that you can read them on your page you’ll probably want to do two scripts, one for caching feeds / creating them and the other for creating the page to view them. Else it may be easier to have one script which creates a static html page.

2. Decide how you are going to actually get / use the feeds: “LWP::UserAgent” is your best bet, and make sure you set a timeout. (if you are making feeds and using eg google as a source you will have to set the user agent string to be eg “mozilla” else you’ll get your ip banned from google) otherwise you can use “LWP::Simple” but you cant set a timeout etc with it.

3. Decide how to process them - best module to use by far is “XML::RSS” if you don’t have it installed on the server and you are unable to get it installed you can try copying the module to XML/RSS.pm relative to your script calling it. However the module has a lot of external dependencies (which use c code that has to be installed properly) - so if you find you can not run it the second best is probably “XML::RSSLite”. It will run with nearly any Perl distribution, just download it from cpan.org and copy to XML/RSSLite.pm however it is buggy and will miss say 1 title element on one feed out of say 10 in my experience.