Question

I have a php file setup to pull through ONE XML data feed, What I would like to do is load up to 4 feeds into it and if possible make it select a random item too. Then parse that into an jQuery News Ticker.

My current PHP is as follows…

<?php
$feed = new DOMDocument();
$feed->load('/feed');
$json = array();

$json['title'] = $feed->getElementsByTagName('channel')->item(0)->getElementsByTagName('title')->item(0)->firstChild->nodeValue;
$json['description'] = $feed->getElementsByTagName('channel')->item(0)->getElementsByTagName('description')->item(0)->firstChild->nodeValue;
$json['link'] = $feed->getElementsByTagName('channel')->item(0)->getElementsByTagName('link')->item(0)->firstChild->nodeValue;

$items = $feed->getElementsByTagName('channel')->item(0)->getElementsByTagName('item');

$json['item'] = array();
$i = 0;


foreach($items as $item) {

   $title = $item->getElementsByTagName('title')->item(0)->firstChild->nodeValue;
   $description = $item->getElementsByTagName('description')->item(0)->firstChild->nodeValue;
   $pubDate = $item->getElementsByTagName('pubDate')->item(0)->firstChild->nodeValue;
   $guid = $item->getElementsByTagName('guid')->item(0)->firstChild->nodeValue;

   $json['item'][$i++]['title'] = $title;
   $json['item'][$i++]['description'] = $description;
   $json['item'][$i++]['pubdate'] = $pubDate;
   $json['item'][$i++]['guid'] = $guid; 

   echo '<li class="news-item"><a href="#">'.$title.'</a></li>';

}


//echo json_encode($json);


?>

How can I modify this to load more than one feed into the file?

Thanks in advance

Answer 1

The simplest approach to doing this is wrapping another loop around the code you have. It’s not the cleanest way but will probably suffice for the purpose.

In general, IMO, it’s always beneficial to learn the basics of the language first. E.g. PHP manual on foreach

This is roughly what the loop needs to look like:

$my_feeds = array("http://.....", "http://.....", "http://.....");

foreach ($my_feeds as $my_feed)
 {
  // This is where your code starts
  $feed = new DOMDocument();
  $feed->load($my_feed); <--------------- notice the variable
  $json = array();

 ... and the rest of the code

 }

this will walk through all the URLs in $my_feeds, open the RSS source, fetch all the items from it, and output them.