Question

Using this post and the Tumblr API, I’m trying to embed the title of whatever the latest blog entry is on my website.

For some reason, I thought this would be a nice simple code, but it returns empty. Have I missed something obvious?

// Contents of includes/latest_blog.php
<?php
  $request_url = 'http://###NAME###.tumblr.com/api/read?start=0&num=1';
  $xml = simplexml_load_file($request_url);
  $title = $xml->posts->post->{‘regular-title’};
  $link = $xml->posts->post[‘url’];
  echo 'Latest blog entry: <a href="'.$link.'">'.$title.'</a>';
?>

The website:

<p class="blog_title"><?php include('includes/latest_blog.php'); ?></p>

Thanks!

Answer 1

Actually the code is fine, it’s just that you’re using fancy Unicode quotation marks as in‘regular-title’ instead of the ASCII single-quote as in 'regular-title'.

Incorrect:

$title = $xml->posts->post->{‘regular-title’};
$link = $xml->posts->post[‘url’];

Correct:

$title = $xml->posts->post->{'regular-title'};
$link = $xml->posts->post['url'];

For some reason, you must have missed the error message, so make sure you see all errors while testing new code:

ini_set('display_errors', true);
error_reporting(-1);