6CC001 Workshop - week 06

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Today let’s play with RSS feeds. There are 2 things you can do:

• Consume an existing third-party feed
• Create your own feed, for other users to consume

Consume an existing third-party feed

Since PHP 5, consuming an XML file (remember that’s all an RSS feed is!) couldn’t be more simple:

  $feed_url = "http://newsrss.bbc.co.uk/rss/newsonline_uk_edition/front_page/rss.xml";

  // Get data from feed file
  $response = file_get_contents($feed_url);
    
  // Insert XML into structure
  $xml = simplexml_load_string($response); 

  // Browse structure
  foreach($xml->channel->item as $one_item)
    echo $one_item->title."<BR>"; 

First you load the content of the remote file into a variable, using the file_get_contents function.

Then you concert this big blob of data into a more friendly, loop-able structured object, using the simplexml_load_string function.

And finally, you loop through your object and display the data on the screen. This example only displays the title of the different articles. Note: You might want to improve this part (items in a list, clickable links etc…)