May 8, 2006 / Technical Discussions

Using SimplePie to parse RSS

Cake PHP have launched a new version or their PHP framework and one of the snippets was the integration of SimplePie. The install and demo for normal sites is incredibly simple and the code is fully featured but held in a single file. It can even spit out the “subscribe via” links for the major sites.

All in all it appears to be very impressive.

  1. Unzip the files on your local file system and run the demo and make sure everything is setup ok. Don’t be alarmed by the huge logo, you are still on your own site 😉
  2. If you want to skip the demo the only file you actually need is simplepie.inc
  3. create this function in your script[php]function getSimplePie($url)
    {
    include(‘simplepie/simplepie.inc’);
    // Parse it
    $feed = new SimplePie();
    $feed->feed_url($url);
    $feed->cache_location(‘./../cache’);
    $feed->init();

    if ($feed->data)
    {
    $output = “

  4. Digitalpoint
  5. Favicon generator
  6. phpClasses.org
  7. R&OS PDF tool
  8. Wowexe.exe

    9. CategoriesTechnical Discussions

    Tagsrss simplepie

    9 Comments

    2. Geoffrey Sneddon
      May 11, 2006

      Where is the CakePHP SimplePie snippet? I just can’t find it.

    4. EJ Fox
      May 12, 2006

      Why the tables? 🙁

    5. sarahk
      May 12, 2006

      In the example? That’s just a hangover from the original test. I’d use a list normally.

    6. Ashley
      May 17, 2006

      How do i echo getsimplepie?

    7. Sarah King
      May 18, 2006

      just

      [php]echo getSimplePie(‘http://mysite.com/feed/’);[/php]

    8. obay
      June 21, 2007

      is there a way to include more than one rss feed?

    9. Sarah King
      June 22, 2007

      No, but you can get several feeds – build them into an array, sort and output.

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