Using Feedcreator to generate ATOM 1.0 feeds

I’m going give out a tip on using feedcreator class library to ease up generating syndication feeds for your web project. As you might know, there are different kind of syndication format out there such as RSS 2.0, RSS 1.0, RSS0.91, ATOM0.3 and ATOM1.0. Each of the syndication format has its own markup (though RSS 0.91 and 2.0 are closely related), making generating feeds from scratch can be quite a chore for your project.

Feedcreator provides an easy way to create RSS and ATOM feeds from within PHP using ease to use classes. However, feedcreator has a couple of drawback :

  1. It does not support ATOM 1.0
  2. Doesn’t support Enclosure
  3. Can’t generate feeds on the fly

Though these drawbacks might not be as serious as I put in here, it is nice to have this features implemented on feedcreator. ATOM 1.0 is a new syndication format issued by IETF as a standard way to produce feeds, ATOM 1.0 has a nice features and more structured layout than the ever-inconsistent RSS feeds.

Though Enclosure tag is optional in RSS 2.0, the tag is significant for those who are into podcasting or photoblogging. Enclosure feature allows for the syndicated feed to not just serve text content, but also to package an enclosure (call it an attachment of some sort), as well. IIn the podcasting model, the RSS enclosure contains an audio file, which subscribers can listen to on their devices.

Generating feeds on the fly is one of the most requested feature of feedcreator. This allows feeds to be generated dynamically upon request as opposed to generating feed on certain event (such as posting new articles). Mambo and PhpGedView project uses modified Feedcreator to generate feeds on-the-fly.

I’ve published a modified version of Feedcreator (namely Feedcreator 1.7.2-ppt) that contains all of these enhancements (or hacks). Here’s a snippets on how to use the additional features :


/*

This demo is to illustrate how to use feedcreator
using outputFeed function, ATOM1.0 and enclosure
support.

Enclosure support is useful if you are into
podcasting or publishing photoblog.

the required parameter for enclosure is url, length
and type (as in MIME-type)

*/

< ? php include ("include/feedcreator.class.php"); //define channel $rss = new UniversalFeedCreator(); $rss->useCached();
$rss->title="Personal News Site";
$rss->description="daily news from me";
$rss->link="http://mydomain.net/";
$rss->syndicationURL="http://mydomain.net/$PHP_SELF";

//channel items/entries
$item = new FeedItem();
$item->title = "test berita pertama";
$item->link = "http://mydomain.net/news/somelinks.html";
$item->description = "hahaha aku berjaya!";
$item->source = "http://mydomain.net";
$item->author = "my_email@mydomain.net";

//optional enclosure support
$item->enclosure = new EnclosureItem();
$item->enclosure->url='http://mydomain.net/news/picture.jpg';
$item->enclosure->length="65905";
$item->enclosure->type='image/jpeg';

$rss->addItem($item);

//Valid parameters are RSS0.91, RSS1.0, RSS2.0, PIE0.1 (deprecated),
// MBOX, OPML, ATOM, ATOM1.0, ATOM0.3, HTML, JS

$rss->outputFeed("ATOM1.0");
//$rss->saveFeed("ATOM1.0", "news/feed.xml");

?>

You can download the modified version of Feedcreator 1.7.2 from my server, the zip package contains the modified class library, GNU/LGPL license, some demo php file and a diff file against the plain vanilla Feedcreator 1.7.2 for curious people.

p/s : all of the modifications are written by me except outputFeed function which is written by Fabian Wolf.

Download :
Feedcreator 1.7.2-ppt (zip)

Feedcreator website : http://www.bitfolge.de/rsscreator-en.html

RSS2PDF – Free Online RSS and Atom to PDF Generator

I’ve discovered this website while on the internet, http://www.rss2pdf.com/. Like the title said, this website can turn any of your syndication feeds into pretty PDF documents. RSS2PDF also supports news feed auto-discovery making your life a little bit easier.

What can you do with RSS2PDF? Well for starters, the website itself has given some ideas to visitors on how to utilise them, such as creating comic PDF from any feed at Tapestry Comics, turn google news into pdf articles, and publish your blog feed into paper-based bulletin and transform your flickr photos in PDF style album. The choices are just limitless

Comparing Atom 1.0 and RSS 2.0

Came across this article which discusses about Atom 1.0 and RSS 2.0 features. I’m interested in this article because I also in the process of implementing/writing RSS/Atom feed plugin myself.

The document itself seems to bias on Atom 1.0 feed, and contain one factual error in which it states that Blogger publishing protocol is widely use with RSS, which is wrong. Blogger use Atom api as its publishing protocol.

Other than that, this document is great is you want to glance through the differences between RSS 2.0 and Atom 1.0 which is (becoming) an IETF standards-track RFC.

Read the article : RSS 2.0 and Atom1.0, Compared

Worth reading :
RSS 2.0 Specification
Atom 1.0 Syndication Format
What is RSS
Atom Wiki Page

RSS 2.0 / Atom 1.0 for Coppermine 1.3.x plugin

Coppermine 1.3.x Plugin RSS 2.0

I’ve made some improvements over my previous Coppermine plugin.

I’ve added Atom 1.0 support and picture caption to the published feed. I’ve also altered the default feed to publish the latest 10 photos instead of 6.

Well, glad to have a plugin that can publish both RSS and Atom feed in Coppermine 1.3.x

old Download links :

  1. zip package
  2. tar.gz package

Download Coppermine RSS/ATOM plugin here:

  1. Mirror #1
  2. Mirror #2
  3. Mirror #3

*Note that this plugin worked under Coppermine 1.4.x also, but it is untested with PHP 5.x.

Hacked RSS 2.0 for Coppermine 1.3.x plugin

Coppermine Logo

I’ve got over my boredom by coding a simple RSS 2.0 plugin for Coppermine 1.3.x.

This plugin simply publish your latest photo(s) via RSS 2.0 feed through the url http://yourgallery.com/rss20.php. It is easy to install and only contains one file! Just upload the rss20.php to the root directory of your Coppermine installation, and off it goes!

I’ve decided to release the plugin to public under the GNU General Public License 2.0. Please mail me any suggestions or feedback!

Download links :

  1. tar.gz package
  2. zip package