How to Read RSS Feeds with PHP 5
Posted: Wed Dec 23, 2009 2:47 am
PHP 5's ability to read XML files is fantastically easy to use. In the past it was possible but it required quite a bit of long winded code to get any where. PHP 5's SimpleXmlElement function makes working with XML a breeze, and with much less code too! Let's take the following example:
In the above example we want to display the contents of an RSS feed, in our example http://www.mywebsite.com/rss/. Using the file_get_contents function we can get the contents of this RSS file and put them in a variable called $feed. We then use the SimpleXmlElement function to process the RSS feed and put it in a format we can use. This usable format (now an objext) is stored in $rss.
The $rss object can now be used to get any information that was in our RSS feed. The foreach loop does just that, looping through each item.
It really is that simple, and there's loads more you can do with the SimpleXmlElement class - check out the PHP documentation for more.
Code: Select all
$feed = file_get_contents('http://www.mywebsite.com/rss/');
$rss = new SimpleXmlElement($feed);
foreach($rss->channel->item as $entry) {
echo "<p><a href='$entry->link' title='$entry->title'>" . $entry->title . "</a></p>";
} The $rss object can now be used to get any information that was in our RSS feed. The foreach loop does just that, looping through each item.
It really is that simple, and there's loads more you can do with the SimpleXmlElement class - check out the PHP documentation for more.