need bbc news script

**riderz** · 31.07.10, 14:05

u are really to lazy to use Google

Added after 13 minutes:

1. Displaying an external RSS feed as HTML

The PHP class presented in the preceding article also includes a display option, but usually you will want to customise that for your website. In this case we use the 'raw' data to present a list of headlines and dates.

We're using BBC News for this example simply because they have some of the friendliest Terms of Use. Before including any external feeds on your website, always check the relevant Terms of Use to make sure that you're allowed to display their content.

2. PHP code for this example

Again, this is just an example of what you can do using our PHP classes (there's also code for an Atom Feed Reader) to include external feeds.

The parameters at the top define the feed source, how many items to display and where and for how long to keep a local cached version of the data.

After that it's just a matter of extracting the relevant data from the array returned by getRawOutput() and adding some simple HTML formatting.

Code:

<?PHP
  # define script parameters
  $BLOGURL    = "http://newsrss.bbc.co.uk/rss/newsonline_uk_edition/front_page/rss.xml";
  $NUMITEMS   = 2;
  $TIMEFORMAT = "j F Y, g:ia";
  $CACHEFILE  = "/tmp/" . md5($BLOGURL);
  $CACHETIME  = 4; # hours

  # download the feed iff a cached version is missing or too old
  if(!file_exists($CACHEFILE) || ((time() - filemtime($CACHEFILE)) > 3600 * $CACHETIME)) {
    if($feed_contents = @file_get_contents($BLOGURL)) {
      # write feed contents to cache file
      $fp = fopen($CACHEFILE, 'w');
      fwrite($fp, $feed_contents);
      fclose($fp);
    }
  }

  include "class.myrssparser.php";
  $rss_parser = new myRSSParser($CACHEFILE);

  # read feed data from cache file
  $feeddata = $rss_parser->getRawOutput();
  extract($feeddata['RSS']['CHANNEL'][0], EXTR_PREFIX_ALL, 'rss');

  # display leading image
  if(isset($rss_IMAGE[0]) && $rss_IMAGE[0]) {
    extract($rss_IMAGE[0], EXTR_PREFIX_ALL, 'img');
    echo "<p><a title=\"{$img_TITLE}\" href=\"{$img_LINK}\"><img src=\"{$img_URL}\" alt=\"\"></a></p>\n";
  }

  # display feed title
  echo "<h4><a title=\"",htmlspecialchars($rss_DESCRIPTION),"\" href=\"{$rss_LINK}\" target=\"_blank\">";
  echo htmlspecialchars($rss_TITLE);
  echo "</a></h4>\n";

  # display feed items
  $count = 0;
  foreach($rss_ITEM as $itemdata) {
    echo "<p><b><a href=\"{$itemdata['LINK']}\" target=\"_blank\">";
    echo htmlspecialchars(stripslashes($itemdata['TITLE']));
    echo "</a></b><br>\n";
    echo htmlspecialchars(stripslashes($itemdata['DESCRIPTION'])),"<br>\n";
    echo "<i>",date($TIMEFORMAT, strtotime($itemdata['PUBDATE'])),"</i></p>\n\n";
    if(++$count >= $NUMITEMS) break;
  }

  # display copyright information
  echo "<p><small>&copy; {",htmlspecialchars($rss_COPYRIGHT),"}</small></p>\n";
?>

As you can see from the code comments, this snippet displays first the image associated with the feed (as a link) followed by the feed title and a limited number of items. At the bottom it displays also the copyright information. Not all RSS/Atom feeds will contain the same items so you may need to customise what is displayed.

Please Note: this code is provided for explanatory purposes only and care should be taken when using or modifying it for any other purpose.

3. myRSSParser: Could not open $file for input

This code assumes that the script has permission to create files in the /tmp/ directory and that those files will remain there, readable, for a number of hours. This is so that the RSS feed doesn't have to be fetched again every time the page is loaded, but rather the relevant data can be stored on the server.

If the /tmp/ directory does not exist, is not writable or is not keeping files in place for sufficient time then you will need to create your own webserver-writable directory and change the $CACHEFILE setting accordingly.

To see the actual error message from the server, you will need to change this line in the class file:

Code:

$fp = @fopen($file, 'r') or die("myRSSParser: Could not open $file for input");

to just:

Code:

$fp = fopen($file, 'r');

If there is a problem reading the cache file (and you are not surpressing PHP errors) you should see a number of warning messages. Normally the first line will indicate the actual problem.

4. Analyzing the Feed data

Using different feed sources can be tricky as they can use different RSS formats which means different tagnames and data formats. The first step then is to examine the 'raw' data to see what tags are available and how they are nested.

Code:

<pre><?PHP
  print_r($feeddata);
?></pre>

The output should be something like the following PHP array. You can see from this how the preceding code extracts data to present the IMAGE, TITLE, ITEMs and COPYRIGHT for the example.

Code:

Array
(
    [TITLE] => BBC News - Home
    [LINK] => http://www.bbc.co.uk/go/rss/int/news/-/news/
    [DESCRIPTION] => 
        The latest stories from the Home section of the
        BBC News web site.
      
    [LANGUAGE] => en-gb
    [LASTBUILDDATE] => Sat, 31 Jul 2010 11:00:46 +0000
    [COPYRIGHT] => 
        Copyright: (C) British Broadcasting Corporation, 
        see http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/help/rss/4498287.stm
        for terms and conditions of reuse.
      
    [DOCS] => http://www.bbc.co.uk/syndication/
    [TTL] => 15
    [ITEM] => Array
        (
            [0] => Array
                (
                    [TITLE] => 'Progress' in new Afghan mission
                    [DESCRIPTION] => British forces say they have seized two compounds in a Taliban stronghold at the start of a fresh bid to push insurgents out of Helmand province.
                    [LINK] => http://www.bbc.co.uk/go/rss/int/news/-/news/uk-10825573
                    [GUID] => http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-10825573
                    [PUBDATE] => Sat, 31 Jul 2010 07:47:38 +0000
                )

            [1] => Array
                (
                    [TITLE] => Love Parade memorial service held
                    [DESCRIPTION] => Germany holds an emotional memorial service for the 21 people killed in a stampede at the Love Parade dance festival a week ago. 
                    [LINK] => http://www.bbc.co.uk/go/rss/int/news/-/news/world-europe-10825599
                    [GUID] => http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-10825599
                    [PUBDATE] => Sat, 31 Jul 2010 09:54:22 +0000
                )

        )

)

If this all seems too complicated you can always go back to the generic HTML display code provided with the PHP classes linked below.

5. Possible improvements

One drawback of the above script is that every $CACHETIME hours one visitor to the page displaying the RSS feed will have the page load delayed as the feed is updated.

This could be avoided if there was a CRON job (scheduled server side script) updating the $CACHEFILE at regular intervals so you don't have to rely on the PHP script to perform that function.

If that's not an option you can also modify the script so that the fetching of the feed happens at the end of the page rather than in the middle.

To achieve that, we take the section of the code that updates the feed and turn it into a PHP function:

Code:

function updateFeed()
{
  global $BLOGURL, $CACHEFILE;
  if($feed_contents = file_get_contents($BLOGURL)) {
    # write feed contents to cache file
    $fp = fopen($CACHEFILE, 'w');
    fwrite($fp, $feed_contents);
    fclose($fp);
  }
}

The code at the top of the script would then read:

Code:

  # download the feed iff cached version is missing
  if(!file_exists($CACHEFILE)) updateFeed();

And you can add at the bottom of the page - after all HTML content has been output:

Code:

<?PHP
  # download the feed iff cached version is too old
  if((time() - filemtime($CACHEFILE)) > 3600 * $CACHETIME) {
    flush();
    updateFeed();
  }
?>

These changes will be more useful on a high-traffic website. Otherwise if you only have a couple of visitors a day they will often not see the latest items from the RSS feed unless it's updated before being displayed.

**BioBeo** · 05.12.10, 16:27

Looks like this article..

RSS Feed Reader Code Example < PHP | The Art of Web

**warfrek** · 05.12.10, 21:21

Thanks for this one dude.

need bbc news script

need bbc news script

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