Question

I have a old website that generate its own RSS everytime a new post is created. Everything worked when I was on a server with PHP 4 but now that the host change to PHP 5, I always have a ‘bad formed XML’. I was using xml_parser_create() and xml_parse(…) and fwrite(..) to save everything.

Here is the example when saving (I read before save to append old RSS line of course).

function SaveXml() {     if (!is_file($this->getFileName()))     {         //Création du fichier         $file_handler = fopen($this->getFileName(),'w');          fwrite($file_handler,'');          fclose($file_handler);     }//Fin du if      //Header xml version='1.0' encoding='utf-8'     $strFileData = '<?xml version='1.0' encoding='iso-8859-1' ?><rss version='2.0' xmlns:dc='http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/'><channel><title>'.$this->getProjectName().'</title><link>http://www.mywebsite.com</link><description>My description</description><lastBuildDate>' . date('r'). '</lastBuildDate>';      //Data     reset($this->arrData);     foreach($this->arrData as $i => $value)     {         $strFileData .= '<item>';             $strFileData .= '<title>'. $this->GetNews($i,0) . '</title>';             $strFileData .= '<pubDate>'. $this->GetNews($i,1) . '</pubDate>';             $strFileData .= '<dc:creator>'. $this->GetNews($i,2) . '</dc:creator>';             $strFileData .= '<description><![CDATA['. $this->GetNews($i,3) . ']]> </description>';             $strFileData .= '<link><![CDATA['. $this->GetNews($i,4) . ']]></link>';             $strFileData .= '<guid>'. $this->GetNews($i,4) . '</guid>';             //$strFileData .= '<category>'. $this->GetNews($i,5) . '</category>';             $strFileData .= '<category>Mycategory</category>';         $strFileData .= '</item>';      }//Fin du for i       $strFileData .= '</channel></rss>';        if (file_exists($this->getFileName()))//Détruit le fichier         unlink($this->getFileName());       $file_handler = fopen($this->getFileName(),'w');        fwrite($file_handler,$strFileData);      fclose($file_handler); }//Fin de SaveXml 

My question is : how do you create and fill up your RSS in PHP?

Answer 1

At swcombine.com we use Feedcreator. Use that one and your problem will be gone. 🙂

Here is the PHP code to use it once installed:

function feed_simnews() {     $objRSS = new UniversalFeedCreator();     $objRSS->title = 'My News';     $objRSS->link = 'http://link.to/news.php';     $objRSS->description = 'daily news from me';     $objRSS->xsl = 'http://link.to/feeds/feedxsl.xsl';     $objRSS->language = 'en';     $objRSS->copyright = 'Copyright: Mine!';     $objRSS->webmaster = '[e-mail]';     $objRSS->syndicationURL = 'http://link.to/news/simnews.php';     $objRSS->ttl = 180;      $objImage = new FeedImage();     $objImage->title = 'my logo';     $objImage->url = 'http://link.to/feeds/logo.jpg';     $objImage->link = 'http://link.to';     $objImage->description = 'Feed provided by link.to. Click to visit.';     $objImage->width = 120;     $objImage->height = 60;     $objRSS->image = $objImage;      //Function retrieving an array of your news from date start to last week     $colNews = getYourNews(array('start_date' => 'Last week'));      foreach($colNews as $p) {         $objItem = new FeedItem();         $objItem->title = $p->title;         $objItem->description = $p->body;         $objItem->link = $p->link;         $objItem->date = $p->date;         $objItem->author = $p->author;         $objItem->guid = $p->guid;          $objRSS->addItem($objItem);     }      $objRSS->saveFeed('RSS2.0', 'http://link.to/feeds/news.xml', false); }; 

Quite KISS. 🙂