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Contents
Introduction
Uses
Quick Start
Templates
Running from FeedForAll's server
Running on local server
Example websites
Advanced Notes
Restricting Access
Caching
Introduction:
-------------
FeedForAll has made available a free PHP program called
rss2html.php, which can be used by webmasters to automatically
display RSS feeds on their website. The resulting webpage will
always show the RSS feed's most current data. The advantage of
using the rss2html.php script is that the resulting webpage's
contents will always be up to date, and can be easily spidered
by search engines.
Uses:
-----
- Create a webpage with an RSS feed's information
- Insert an RSS feed's information into a location in an
existing webpage
Quick Start:
------------
rss2html.php has a built in utility to help get started quickly.
This is done by calling rss2html.php with the parameter
"buildURL", for example
http://scripts.rss2html.com/public/rss2html.php?buildURL . After
filling in the infomation about your feed and template you will
be shown the exact code to include the output of rss2html.php
into a webpage.
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Templates:
----------
FeedForAll's rss2html.php script uses templates to generate its
output. The templates allow you to easily control what the
resulting webpage will look like. A template can be used to
generate a complete webpage, or a portion of a webpage like a
table (which can then be included inside an existing webpage).
The template's syntax is exactly the same as the syntax used in
FeedForAll's export functions.
Templates are simply standard HTML documents, with special
variables inserted where the RSS feed's data should appear.
Usually the easiest way to create a template is to create a
sample webpage with some real data in it, and then replace the
feed's data with template variables, or modify an existing
webpage, by adding template variables. Here is a list of the
variables supported by FeedForAll's rss2html.php script:
~~~FeedTitle~~~ (The feed's title)
~~~FeedDescription~~~ (the feed's description)
~~~FeedContentEncoded~~~ (the feed's description from optional
ContentEncoded field)
~~~FeedLink~~~ (the feed's link)
~~~FeedPubDate~~~ (the feed's pub date/time in RSS format)
~~~FeedPubLongDate~~~ (the feed's date in a long date format)
~~~FeedPubShortDate~~~ (the feed's date in a short date format)
~~~FeedPubLongTime~~~ (the feed's time in a long time format)
~~~FeedPubShortTime~~~ (the feed's time in a short time format)
~~~FeedCreativeCommons~~~ (the feed's Creative Commons(R)
License URL if one exists)
~~~FeedImageUrl~~~ (the URL to the feed's image)
~~~FeedImageTitle~~~ (the title for the feed's image)
~~~FeedImageLink~~~ (the link associated with the feed's image)
~~~FeedMaxItems=X~~~ (the maximum number of items to appear on
the webpage - replace 'X' with a number. The first 'X' number of
items in the feed will be displayed. Using a negative number for
'X' will show the last 'X' items from a feed.
~~~SortByPubDate~~~ (the items will be sorted by their PubDate,
before they are displayed - newest first)
~~~NoFutureItems~~~ (items with PubDates that are in the future
won't be displayed until that date/time arrives)
~~~BeginItemsRecord~~~ (repeat everything between this and the
end marker, for each item)
~~~EndItemsRecord~~~ (repeat everything between this and the
start marker, for each item)
~~~BeginAlternateItemsRecord~~~ (separates the ItemsRecord into
alternating halves)
~~~ItemTitle~~~ (the item's title)
~~~ItemDescription~~~ (the item's description)
~~~ItemContentEncoded~~~ (the item's description from optional
ContentEncoded field)
~~~ItemLink~~~ (the item's link)
~~~ItemPubDate~~~ (the item's pub date/time in RSS format)
~~~ItemPubLongDate~~~ (the items's date in a long date format)
~~~ItemPubShortDate~~~ (the item's date in a short date format)
~~~ItemPubLongTime~~~ (the item's time in a long time format)
~~~ItemPubShortTime~~~ (the item's time in a short time format)
~~~ItemEnclosureUrl~~~ (the item's enclosure URL)
~~~ItemEnclosureType~~~ (the item's enclosure MIME type)
~~~ItemEnclosureLength~~~ (the item's enclosure Length)
~~~ItemEnclosureLengthFormatted~~~ (the item's enclosure Length
formatted into Kilo, Mega or Giga Bytes)
~~~ItemGuid~~~ (the item's GUID field value)
~~~ItemAuthor~~~ (the item's author field value)
~~~ItemComments~~~ (the item's comments field value)
~~~ItemSource~~~ (the item's source field value)
~~~ItemSourceUrl~~~ (the item's source url attribute value)
~~~ItemCategory~~~ (the first item's category field value)
~~~ItemCategoryDomain~~~ (the item's first category domain
attribute value)
~~~ItemCreativeCommons~~~ (The Creative Commons(R) License URL
of the item, or feed if there isn't one on the item but there is
on the feed)
When the rss2html.php script runs, it will substitute
information from the RSS feed into the location wherever a
variable is found. For example, every time ~~~FeedTitle~~~ is
found in the template's text, the Title from the RSS feed will
be substituted.
Special variables:
The ~~~FeedXMLFilename~~~ variable is the URL of the feed being
processed.
The ~~~FeedMaxItems=X~~~ variable can be used to limit the
number of items that will be inserted into the webpage. Replace
the 'X' with a number of feed items you would like displayed (no
spaces).
The ~~~NumberOfFeedItems~~~ variable is the acutally number of
items that were found and will be displayed, before any advanced
processing.
The ~~~BeginItemsRecord~~~ is used to mark the beginning of the
section in the template, that should be repeated for each item
in the RSS feed. A corresponding ~~~EndItemsRecord~~~ should be
used to mark the end of the repeating section. Everything
invbetween these two variables will be repeated for every item
in the feed. You would typically place all your ~~~Item...~~~
variables in between the ~~~BeginItemsRecord~~~ and
~~~EndItemsRecord~~~ variables.
The ~~~BeginAlternateItemsRecord~~~ tag is optional, and can be
used in between the ~~~BeginItemsRecord~~~ and
~~~EndItemsRecord~~~ variables to split the section into two
halves. Everything between the ~~~BeginItemsRecord~~~ and the
~~~BeginAlternateItemsRecord~~~ will be used for odd numbered
RSS feed items, and everything between the
~~~BeginAlternateItemsRecord~~~ and the ~~~EndItemsRecord~~~
will be used for even numbered RSS feed items. This is typically
used to give alternating feed items a slightly different look.
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Example - template used to generate a
complete HTML webpage:
<HTML>
<HEAD>
<TITLE>~~~FeedTitle~~~</TITLE>
</HEAD>
<BODY>
<H1>~~~FeedTitle~~~</H1>
<BR>
<H2>~~~FeedDescription~~~</H2>
<BR>
<TABLE width="100%">
~~~BeginItemsRecord~~~
<TR>
<TD>
<B>~~~ItemTitle~~~</B>
</TD>
</TR>
<TR>
<TD>
~~~ItemDescription~~~
</TD>
</TR>
<TR>
<TD>
<BR>
</TD>
</TR>
~~~EndItemsRecord~~~
</TABLE>
</BODY>
</HTML>
Example - template used to generate an
HTML table, for including inside existing webpage*
<TABLE WIDTH="100%">
~~~BeginItemsRecord~~~
<TR VALIGN="TOP">
<TD>
<BR>
<FONT SIZE="-1">~~~ItemPubShortDate~~~ </FONT><BR>
<B>~~~ItemTitle~~~</B><BR>
~~~ItemDescription~~~<BR>
<BR>
<A HREF="~~~ItemLink~~~">more info</A>
<BR><BR>
</TD>
</TR>
~~~EndItemsRecord~~~
</TABLE>
*Server-side includes, imbedded PHP code, and other inclusion
methods are outside the scope of this document.
Running rss2html.php from FeedForAll's
public server:
-----------------------------------------------------
If your webserver doesn't support PHP, then you can run the
rss2html.php script on FeedForAll's public server instead. All
you need to do is setup a link on your website to access the
script and resulting webpage.
rss2html.php has a builtin utility to help create the URLs and
trouble shoot problems. It is available by adding ?buildURL,
http://scripts.rss2html.com/public/rss2html.php?buildURL
Syntax:
http://scripts.rss2html.com/public/rss2html.php?XMLFILE=<your-rss-feed>&TEMPLATE=<your-template>&MAXITEMS=<max-items>
The above URL should all be on one line, with no spaces.
Replace '<your-rss-feed>' with the full URL to your RSS feed
(i.e. http://www.mydomain.com/myfeed.xml)
Replace '<your-template>' with the full URL to the webpage
template you want to use (i.e.
http://www.mydomain.com/mytemplate.htm)
Replace '<max-items>' with the maximum number of items from your
RSS feed you want included on the webpage. The MAXITEMS variable
is optional. If it is not included, all the RSS feed items will
be included.
Sample:
http://scripts.rss2html.com/public/rss2html.php?XMLFILE=http://www.feedforall.com/blog-feed.xml&TEMPLATE=http://www.feedforall.com/sample-template.html
The above URL should all be on one line, with no spaces.
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Running rss2html.php from your own webserver:
---------------------------------------------
Probably the best way to use rss2html.php is to upload it to
your own webserver. This gives you two ways to access the
script. First, you can setup a link on your webpage to access
the script and resulting webpage.
Syntax:
http://<your-domain>/rss2html.php?XMLFILE=<your-rss-feed>&TEMPLATE=<your-template>&MAXITEMS=<max-items>
The above URL should all be on one line, with no spaces.
Replace '<your-domain>' with the domain of your website
Replace '<your-rss-feed>' with the full URL to your RSS feed
(i.e. http://www.mydomain.com/myfeed.xml)
Replace '<your-template>' with the full URL to the webpage
template you want to use (i.e.
http://www.mydomain.com/mytemplate.htm)
Replace '<max-items>' with the maximum number of items from your
RSS feed you want included on the webpage. The MAXITEMS variable
is optional. If it is not included, all the RSS feed items will
be included.
Sample:
http://feedforall.com/rss2html.php?XMLFILE=blog-feed.xml&TEMPLATE=sample-template.html&MAXITEMS=10
The second option is to edit the settings inside of the
rss2html.php script itself, and then just access the script as
if it were a regular webpage.
With a text editor open up the rss2html.php file. Look for the
line near the beginning that looks like this:
$XMLfilename = "sample.xml";
Replace sample.xml with either the local path or full URL to
your RSS feed file.
Next, find the line that looks like this:
$TEMPLATEfilename = "BasicWebpage.htm";
Replace BasicWebpage.htm with either the local path or full URL
to your template file.
Finally, if you want to specify the maximum number of items to
include from your feed, find the line that looks like this:
$FeedMaxItems = 10000;
Replace 10000 with the maximum number of items you want.
Save the file with a new name (what you want to call it on your
website), but make sure to keep the .php extension.
For example, if you named it 'myfeed.php', you can now access it
from your browser by typing: http://<your-domain.com>/myfeed.php
Sample:
http://www.feedforall.com/blog.php
Examples of the RSS to HTML PHP
script in action:
http://www.feedforall.com/blog.htm (FeedForAll's main RSS feed,
using the rss2html.php script)
http://www.feedforall.com/public/layouts.htm (lots of sample
pages)
http://www.small-business-software-net (the main page is
actually the rss2html.php script being run)
http://www.create-rss.com (the main page is actually the
rss2html.php script being run)
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Advanced Notes:
---------------
Version 2.0 and later of this script use the PHP curl function
to open feeds and templates. Earlier versions used fopen. If you
need to use fopen for any reason, there is a setting at the
beginning of the script that can be changed, to force that
behavior.
Sometimes the URL of a feed you want to use with rss2html.php
contains illegal characters in it. For example, you can' t use
spaces, question marks, amperstans, etc in an URL. The solution
is to use encoded characters in their place. The best way to do
this is with a built in utility, rss2html.php?buildURL . Here is
a list of illegal characters and their equivalent encodings:
% -> %25
? -> %3f
& -> %26
= -> %3d
+ -> %2b
<SPACE> -> %20
For example this feed's URL:
http://www.mynewssource.com/opensearch.php?query=pike+fishing&search=Search&type=search
Should look like this in a call to rss2html.php:
http://www.rss2html.com/public/rss2html.php?XMLFILE=http://www.mynewssource.com/opensearch.php%3fquery%3dpike%2bfishing%26search%3dSearch%26type%3dsearch
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Restricting Access:
-------------------
The rss2html.php script now offers the ability to control if the
feed and template are local or remote. Local files can be
limited to specific file extensions. File access is controlled
by the variable $fileAccessLevel, the default value is 1.
File access level:
-1 = Remote files are NOT allowed, only local files allowed for
template
and feed which have filenames ending in extensions in the
$allowedTemplateExtensions and $allowedFeedExtensions lists
below
0 = Remote files and any local files allowed for template and
feed
1 = Remote files and only local files allowed for template and
feed
which have filenames ending in extensions in the
$allowedTemplateExtensions and $allowedFeedExtensions lists
below
2 = No local files allowed, remote files only.
Allowed file extensions is a list of the allowable extensions
for local for the template and the feed. Below are the default
values of both of the arrays:
$allowedTemplateExtensions = Array(".html", ".htm", ".shtml");
$allowedFeedExtensions = Array(".xml", ".rss");
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Caching:
--------
There is now a caching module available for use with rss2html.
It caches the source RSS feed on your local server (if your are
running rss2html.php on your local server). This can noticably
speed up page displays, and reduce bandwith usage. The caching
module is available to all registered users of FeedForAll or
FeedForAll Mac. It can be downloaded from here:
http://www.feedforall.com/rss-cache.htm
Copyright 2005-2009 NotePage, Inc. All rights reserved
$Id: rss2html-docs.txt,v 3.2 2009/07/16 13:06:37 housley Exp $
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