Parsing Multiple PHP Rss Feeds

PHP Rss Feeds With Magpie

This tutorial shows how to use Magpie to parse multiple rss feed. If you need to know how to install Magpie in 30 seconds, please see this RSS Feed tutorial.

Here is how php parses the multiple rss feeds. First of all, we require the file rss_fetch.inc so that we can parse the feeds in the first place. Then, we create an array of urls for the various RSS feeds. Then, one at a time, the rss feed urls go through the fetch_rss() function located in the Magpie installation. Next, Magpie returns an array called $items, and that data is parsed. Within the foreach loop, the $tot_array array is made. The array contains each item that we wanted. The array eventually got huge. The date is the first element in the array for sorting purposes. Therefore, after using the rsort() function, we got the array ordered by date descending. Finally, the $tot_array was output into a table.

require('magpie/rss_fetch.inc');
	
	$urls = array('http://vancouver.en.craigslist.ca/cta/index.rss', 'http://vancouver.kijiji.ca/f-SearchAdRss?CatId=174&Location=80003');
	
	foreach($urls as $url) {
	$rss = fetch_rss($url);

foreach ($rss->items as $item ) {
	$title = $item[title];
	$url   = $item[link];
	$description   = $item[description];
	$date = $item['dc']['date'];

	//make array here
$tot_array[] = $date.",".$title.",".$url.",".$description;
}
}

//print_r($tot_array);
rsort($tot_array);

echo '<table>
<thead>
<th>Title</th>
<th>Description</th>
<th>Date</th>
</thead>';

foreach($tot_array as $tot) {
$all = explode(",",$tot);
$date = date("Y-m-d",strtotime($all[0]));
$title = $all[1];
$url = $all[2];
$description = $all[3];
//echo $tot."<br/>";
echo '<tr>';
echo '<td><a href="'.$url.'">'.$title.'</a></td>';
echo '<td>'.$description.'</td>';
echo '<td>'.$date.'</td>';
echo '</tr>';
}
echo '</table>';

More Coding Samples:
Parse Single URL RSS Feed
Parse Multiple URLs From RSS Feed Part 1

October 6, 2012 by kent