CaRP is a “Caching RSS Parser“, thus it’s name. It comes in a variety of flavours but I tested the free version.
The only problem I had was that my host had safe mode turned on and that caused some problems in the “installation” – creating the cache folders but the manual instructions did the trick.
The scripts come with an install and example page. To get real value check their online examples which show how you can combine two feeds and take the most recent, for example.
The big limitation with the free version of carp is that I can’t remove the description altogether and I can’t control the format. However through the stylesheet I can get some control, just not as much as with the other systems.
It’s good though, and while the installation caused me some problems actually using it was a breeze.
How I set up the demo
- Download the zip version and unzip onto your PC.
- Rename the “carp_gpl” folder to “carp”
- Upload all the files onto your website, including the carp folder. Normally this will be to www.mysite.com/carp
- Use your browser to run www.mysite.com/carp/carpsetup.php and follow the instructions. If you have safe mode turned on you will need to use your ftp program to manually create the following folders and chmod them to 777
- aggregatecache
- autocache
- manualcache
- After the setup process is complete delete carpsetup.php and carp/carpsetupinc.php as they could be used against you.
- Decide which page you want to add the feed to and open the appropriate file in your favourite editor (mine is Zend).
- Add these lines to the file, save and upload![php]require_once ‘carp/carp/carp.php’;
CarpConf(‘maxidesc’,100);
CarpConf(‘maxitems’,5);
CarpCacheShow(‘http://www.propertyinvestor.info/articles/feed/’);[/php]
“The big limitation with the free version of carp is that I can’t remove the description altogether and I can’t control the format.”
To remove the description, do this:
CarpConf(‘iorder’,’link’);
That code tells CaRP to only display the link for each item. (See http://www.geckotribe.com/rss/carp/docs/conf/display/item/#iorder ).
To control the formatting of the description you could do something like this:
CarpConf(‘bidesc’,'<div style=”color:#036;”>’);
CarpConf(‘aidesc’,'</div>’);
“bidesc” = “before item description”, and “aidesc” = “after item description”. There are similar options for the other parts of the feed. For more details, see http://www.geckotribe.com/rss/carp/docs/conf/display/ . CaRP gives you pretty much complete control of the feed, but you may have to do a little poking around in the documentation to find out how to do things till you get the hang of it.