Using Magpie RSS

Magpie RSS is an RSS parser available free from SourceForge.

It consists of a handful of scripts which sit on your site and creates a cache file which needs to be chmod’d to 755 or 777 – you may need to use your FTP tool to do that – or Magpie may do it for you.

So, what do you need to do?

1. Visit the Magpie site and download the latest version of the files.
2. Unzip the files on your local file system. They come with some examples which may be good to have a play with, but you actually only need to upload these into a “magpie” directory
   • rss_cache.inc
   • rss_fetch.inc
   • rss_parse.inc
   • rss_utils.inc
   • extlib/Snoopy.class.inc
3. Now, decide which page you want to add the feed to and open the appropriate file in your favourite editor (mine is Zend).
4. Now you just have to add these lines to the file, save and upload!
   [php]define(‘MAGPIE_DIR’, ‘magpie/’);
   require_once(MAGPIE_DIR.’rss_fetch.inc’);

   $rss = fetch_rss( ‘http://www.propertyinvestor.info/articles/feed/’ );
   $items = array_slice($rss->items, 0, 5);

   $output = “

   “;
   }
   echo ‘

   {$item[‘title’]}

   ‘.$output;[/php]

To be completed…