Alan Levine, Oct 14 2003
Implementing RSS feeds into your own site is doable if the code is built into a system such as Radio or MovableType, but who knows how to sit down and write code to parse XML? Not me.
Here is a strategy you can do quite easily to insert dynamically updated RSS into any web page, blog, or Course Management System.
It makes use of a PHP script (demo version running on our server) that parses the XML feed, and returns a JavaScript set of write commands that insert the information into your page. All you need to do is to insert a simple JavaScript line of code in the part of your page where you want the feed. The only other thing to tidy it up is to link or insert a sytle sheet to format the output.
Here is the first sample feed, the 10 newest item in the Maricopa Learning eXchange:
_The code to put this in your page is:
<script language="JavaScript" src="http://jade.mcli.dist.maricopa.edu/feed/rss2js.php?
src=http://www.mcli.dist.maricopa.edu/mlx/feed/new10.xml">
</script>
<!-- alternative for no javascript -->
<noscript>
<a href="http://jade.mcli.dist.maricopa.edu/feed/rss2html.php?
src=http://www.mcli.dist.maricopa.edu/mlx/feed/new10.xml">View RSS feed
</noscript>
where the value of "src=" is the URL for the RSS feed. Note that we provide a NOSCRIPT option for users with JavaSCript disabled or those using screen readers.
We have added some more parameters to control the output of your feed.
Show/Hide Channel Information (chan=yes|no|title)
The default is to display the channel title and description (chan=yes). You can also specify to display the title of the channel only (chan=title). To hide this display or to set it to title only, add the parameter to your URL:
<script language="JavaScript" src="http://jade.mcli.dist.maricopa.edu/feed/rss2js.php?
src=http://www.mcli.dist.maricopa.edu/mlx/feed/new10.xml&chan=no">
</script>
<!-- alternative for no javascript -->
<noscript>
<a href="http://jade.mcli.dist.maricopa.edu/feed/rss2html.php?
src=http://www.mcli.dist.maricopa.edu/mlx/feed/new10.xml&chan=no">View RSS feed</a>
</noscript>
Limit number of items returned (num=X)
The default is to display all items in the feed. To return only a given number of items, specify it as:
<script language="JavaScript" src="http://jade.mcli.dist.maricopa.edu/feed/rss2js.php?
src=http://www.mcli.dist.maricopa.edu/mlx/feed/new10.xml&num=3">
</script>
<!-- alternative for no javascript -->
<noscript>
<a href="http://jade.mcli.dist.maricopa.edu/feed/rss2html.php?
src=http://www.mcli.dist.maricopa.edu/mlx/feed/new10.xml&num=3">View RSS feed</a>
</noscript>
The default value or specified as num=0 is to display all items.
Show/Hide Item Descriptions (desc=yes|no)
The default is to hide the descriptions of items. To display the item description, add the parameter to your URL:
<script language="JavaScript" src="http://jade.mcli.dist.maricopa.edu/feed/rss2js.php?
src=http://www.mcli.dist.maricopa.edu/mlx/feed/new10.xml&desc=yes">
</script>
<!-- alternative for no javascript -->
<noscript>
<a href="http://jade.mcli.dist.maricopa.edu/feed/rss2html.php?
src=http://www.mcli.dist.maricopa.edu/mlx/feed/new10.xml&desc=yes">View RSS feed</a>
</noscript>
Show/Hide Item Posting Date (date=yes|no)
The default is to hide the date stamp of items. To display the item posting date, add the parameter to your URL:
<script language="JavaScript" src="http://jade.mcli.dist.maricopa.edu/feed/rss2js.php?
src=http://www.mcli.dist.maricopa.edu/mlx/feed/new10.xml&date=yes">
</script>
<!-- alternative for no javascript -->
<noscript>
<a href="http://jade.mcli.dist.maricopa.edu/feed/rss2html.php?
src=http://www.mcli.dist.maricopa.edu/mlx/feed/new10.xml&date=yes">View RSS feed</a>
</noscript>
No need to mess around writing the code! This form will help you build a feed. All you need is the URL for the RSS source.
See it in action...
Here is an example of using all paramaters, to show the title only from the channel information (chan=title), to limit the items to 3 (num=3), to show item descriptions (desc=yes), and show the posting date (date=yes):
<script language="JavaScript" src="http://jade.mcli.dist.maricopa.edu/feed/rss2js.php?src=http://www.mcli.dist.maricopa.edu/mlx/feed/new10.xml&chan=title&num=3&desc=yes&date=yes"></script>
</script>
<!-- alternative for no javascript -->
<noscript>
<a href="http://jade.mcli.dist.maricopa.edu/feed/rss2html.php?
src=http://www.mcli.dist.maricopa.edu/mlx/feed/new10.xml&chan=title&num=3&desc=yes&date=yes">View RSS feed</a>
</noscript>
Insert a link to this external style sheet or put the contens directly into your HTML file, in between <style> ... </style> tags. Edit to match your design dreams (need some muscle with CSS, not much to tinker with fonts and colors).
You can have multiple feeds on the same page, here is one from my blog and following is one from D'Arcy Norman, who helped with the code too:
_ _It is not rocket science, brain surgery, or even tax return level code. The parses uses the Onyx-RSS code from ReadingEd (Note, this site is gone, Ed has moved on, but we are getting ready to post the documentation from this site), which does all of the hard work and even sets up optional cache directories.
For the code minded (please, run it on your server not mine ;-), here is the rss2js.php script and the rss2html.php script (for noscript linked alternatives) or a zip archive with the code and the other pieces.
There are many ways to skin a cat, so here are some other tools that can take an RSS feed as a parameter and return a JavaScript source file for inclusion in any web page
Dec 15, 2003 Minor fixes to take care of uses of this script on other servers. The re-direct for a missing RSS URL (nosource.html) had a suggested format that referred to the script on this server only; now it points to a new version (nosource.php) that dynamically generates the URL for uses elsewhere. Likewise, our "build" script (build.php) that generates sample JavaScript code was referencing just my server; now it too does it dynamically.
Dec 4, 2003 Fixed a bug that was causing incorrect item date displays from RSS 2.0 feeds, thanks to Todd Slater for bringing it to our attention. A revamp of this web page and some documentation for the Onyx parser is coming soon.
Oct 14, 2003 Added code to deal with RSS tags of <guid> elements for item URLs and <pubDate> for RSS 2.0 item published dates. Also added a trp to post "no title" if no title tag exists for items
Oct 13, 2003 Cleaned up code for naming cache files, with many feeds from this site, many were be overwritten by similar feeds names from other sites (previously, the cache fiels were base don the path of the feed, now it is the whole URL)
Sep 15, 2003 Changed Javascript output for items link with a TARGET= option so items would open in a separate browser window.
Aug 8, 2003 Added a NOSCRIPT alternative that provides a link to a HTML version of the feed.
May 14, 2003 Added the web form above for generating previews and the JavaScript syntax for feeds.
May 14, 2003 Added item posting date feature suggested by D'Arcy Norman (who also cleaned up some loop variable madness), and adding channel option for title only display.
May 13, 2003 Update to take care of accessing variables from $_GET array, and add optional paraemters for output control, thanks to suggestions by Randy Brown.
May 7, 2003 modifications in output and cache file setting thanks to D'Arcy Norman.
May 5, 2003 first version