I got sick of looking at shit pieces of code that either didn’t work properly, or produced XML so badly formatted you couldn’t read the raw source to debug it, so I decided to write my own, based on the BBC’s RSS source.
<?php
/*
* @abstract PHP script to correctly generate an RSS feed
* @author Jon Thompson
* @version 0.1
* @since 11 Dec 2009
*
* Requires an SQL table with the following fields to read:
* - title
* - link
* - description
* - thumbnail
*
* Will generate an on-the fly RSS feed from database-driven content.
* For best results, amend the following and add to your pages in the <head></head> section:
*
* <link rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml" title="RSS" href="http://www.yoursite.com/link/to/this/script/rss.php" />
*
*/
//***** Database login details *****
$db_server = "localhost";
$db_database = "database";
$db_username = "username";
$db_password = "password";
//***** RSS feed details *****
$rss_title = "Your title here";
$rss_link = "URL to web page that displays these items";
$rss_description = "An overall description of your feed";
$rss_language = "en-gb";
$rss_copyright = "Your copyright notice";
$rss_docs = "URL to a page explaining distribution and use of these articles";
//***** SQL query to generate list *****
$sql = "SELECT * FROM table limit 15";
//############################################################################################################
//# NOTHING FURTHER TO EDIT FROM THIS POINT ON #
//############################################################################################################
//***** Connect to database *****
$db = mysql_connect($db_server, $db_username, $db_password) or die("Unable to connect to MySQL server\n\n");
mysql_select_db($db_database, $db) or die("Unable to select database\n\n");
//***** Execute the SQL query *****
$result = mysql_query($sql, $db);
//***** Loop through the results to get the rest of the feed *****
if(mysql_num_rows($result)){
while($row=mysql_fetch_assoc($result)){
$output .= " <item>
<title>".htmlentities($row["title"])."</title>
<link>".htmlentities($row["link"])."</link>
<description>".htmlentities($row["description"])."</description>
<media:thumbnail url=\"".htmlentities($row["thumbnail"])."\" />
</item>
";
}
}else{
$output .= " <item>
<title>No entries</title>
<link></link>
<description>Sorry, there are no new entries to view</description>
<media:thumbnail url=\"\" />
</item>
";
}
//***** Build the entire feed from our results *****
//***** This will also format it correctly so it's readble in plain text format *****
$output = "<?xml version=\"1.0\" encoding=\"ISO-8859-1\" ?>
<?xml-stylesheet title=\"XSL_formatting\" type=\"text/xsl\" href=\"/shared/bsp/xsl/rss/nolsol.xsl\"?>
<rss version=\"2.0\" xmlns:media=\"http://search.yahoo.com/mrss\">
<channel>
<title>$rss_title</title>
<link>$rss_link</link>
<description>$rss_description</description>
<language>$rss_language</language>
<lastBuildDate>".date("D, d M Y H:i:s T")."</lastBuildDate>
<copyright>$rss_copyright</copyright>
<docs>$rss_docs</docs>
<ttl>15</ttl>
".$output." </channel>
</rss>\n";
//***** Output the feed correctly *****
header("Content-Type: text/xml");
echo $output;
exit(0);
?>
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