source: Dev/trunk/rdfapi/util/magpie/htdocs/index.html @ 12

Last change on this file since 12 was 12, checked in by basvannuland, 14 years ago

Added RAP RDF API
Added RDF reader writer for save and load survey
File size: 12.6 KB
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1<html>
2  <head>
3  <title>Magpie RSS - PHP RSS Parser</title>
4  <link rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml" title="RSS"
5        href="http://laughingmeme.org/magpierss.rdf" />
6  <style>
7        body {
8                font-family:trebuchet MS, trebuchet, verdana, arial, sans-serif;
9                font-size: 11px;
10       
11        }
12       
13        pre { font-family: "Courier New", monospace;
14      padding: 1em;
15      margin: 0.2em 2.5em 0.2em 3em;
16      background-color: #efeff5;
17      border: 1px solid #cfcfcf;
18      white-space: pre;
19 }
20
21        li.news {
22                padding-bottom:15px;
23        }
24
25        a.nav { color: #FFFFFF; }
26       
27        div.nav {
28                width: 2in;
29                float: right;
30                border: 2px solid #cfcfcf;
31                padding: 5px;
32                background-color: #996699;
33        }
34       
35  </style>
36  </head>
37  <body>
38        <img src="magpie-photo.jpg">
39        <h1>MagpieRSS</h1>
40        <p>
41        <h2>MagpieRSS provides an XML-based (expat) RSS parser in PHP.</h2>
42        <p>
43        MagpieRSS is compatible with RSS .9 through RSS 1.0, and supports the
44        RSS 1.0's modules. (with a few exceptions)
45        <p>
46        <div class="nav">
47        <center><h3>Project Info</h3></center>
48        <ul>
49        <li><a class="nav"
50href="http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=55691">Download
51Magpie</a></li>
52        <li><a class="nav"
53href="http://sourceforge.net/mail/?group_id=55691">Mailing
54Lists</a></li>
55        <li><a class="nav" href="#news">News!</a></li>
56        <li><a class="nav" href="#why">Why?</a></li>
57        <li><a class="nav" href="#features">Features</a></li>
58        <li><a class="nav" href="#philosophy">Philosophy</a></li>
59        <li><a class="nav" href="#usage">Usage Examples</a></li>
60        <li><a class="nav" href="/cookbook.html">Cookbook</a></li>
61        <li><a class="nav" href="#todo">Todo</a></li>
62<li style="list-style: none; padding-top: 5px;"><a title="Keep up on MagpieRSS news via RSS" href="http://laughingmeme.org/magpierss.rdf"><img
63src="http://magpierss.sf.net/black_grey_magpie_news.gif" border="0"></a></li>
64</ul>
65</div>
66        <a name="news"></a>
67        <h3>News!</h3>
68        <ul>
69
70<li class="news">
71                <a
72href="http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=55691">MagpieRSS
730.51 Released</a>
74<ul>
75<li> important bugfix!</li>
76<li> fix <a href="http://laughingmeme.org/archives/000811.html
77">"silent failure"</a> when PHP doesn't have zlib</li>
78</ul>
79
80</li>
81
82<li class="news">
83                <a href="http://minutillo.com/steve/feedonfeeds/">Feed On Feeds Uses Magpie</a>
84<ul>
85<li> server based PHP RSS aggregator built with MagpieRSS</li>
86<li> easy to install, easy to use.</li>
87</ul>
88
89</li>
90
91
92<li class="news">
93                <a
94href="http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=55691&release_id=158897">MagpieRSS
950.5 Released</a>
96<ul>
97<li> supports transparent HTTP gzip content negotiation for reduced bandwidth usage</li>
98<li> quashed some undefined index notices</li>
99</ul>
100
101</li>
102
103
104<li class="news">
105                <a
106href="http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=55691&release_id=139643">MagpieRSS
1070.46 Released</a>
108<ul>
109<li> minor release, more error handling clean up</li>
110<li> documentation fixes, simpler example</li>
111<li> new <a href="/TROUBLESHOOTING">trouble shooting</a> guide for installation and usage problems</a>
112</ul>
113
114</li>
115
116<li class="news">
117                <a
118href="http://laughingmeme.org/magpierss.rdf">Magpie News as RSS</a>
119<ul>
120<li> releases, bug fixes, releated stories as an RSS feed</li>
121</ul>
122
123</li>
124
125
126<li class="news">
127                <a
128href="http://magpierss.sourceforge.net/cookbook.html">MagpieRSS
129Cookbook: Simple PHP RSS How Tos</a>
130<ul>
131<li> answers some of the most frequently asked Magpie questions</li>
132<li> feedback, suggestions, requests, recipes welcome</li>
133</ul>
134
135</li>
136
137<li clas="news">
138 <a href="http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=55691&release_id=134850">MagpieRSS 0.4 Released!</a>
139<ul>
140<li> improved error handling, more flexibility for script authors,
141backwards compatible</li>
142<li> new and better examples!  including using MagpieRSS and <a
143href="http://smarty.php.net">Smarty</a></li>
144<li> new Smarty plugin for RSS date parsing</li>
145</ul>
146<br />
147</li>
148<!--
149<li class="news">
150<a href="http://www.infinitepenguins.net/rss/">Infinite Penguin now
151supports Magpie 0.3</a>
152<ul>
153<li> simple, sophisticated RSS viewer</li>
154<li> includes auto-generated javascript ticker from RSS feed</li>
155</ul>
156
157</li>
158
159
160<li class="news">
161<a
162href="http://traumwind.tierpfad.de/blog/magpie/magpie_alike.php">Traumwind
163releases REX backend for MagpieRSS</a>
164<ul>
165<li>drop in support using regex based XML parser</li>
166<li>parses improperly formed XML that chokes expat</li>
167</ul>
168
169</li>
170
171<li class="news">
172                <a
173href="http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=55691&release_id=118652">
174                MagpieRSS 0.3 Released!</a>
175                <ul>
176                  <li>Support added for
177                         <a href="http://fishbowl.pastiche.org/archives/001132.html">HTTP
178                         Conditional GETs</a>.</li>
179                  <li>See <a href="http://sourceforge.net/project/shownotes.php?group_id=55691&release_id=118652">ChangeLog</a>
180                  for more info.</li>
181            </ul>
182                </li>
183                <li class="news">MagpieRSS 0.2!</a>
184                <ul>
185                  <li>Major clean up of the code.  Easier to use.</li>
186                  <li>Simpler install on shared hosts.</li>
187              <li>Better documentation and comments.</li>
188                </ul>
189                </li>
190                <li class="news">We've <a href="http://sourceforge.net/projects/magpierss/">moved to
191                Sourceforge!</a></li>
192        -->
193        </ul>
194        </p>
195        <p>
196        <a name="why"></a>
197        <h3>Why?</h3>
198        I wrote MagpieRSS out of a frustration with the limitations of existing
199        solutions.   In particular many of the existing PHP solutions seemed to:
200        <ul>
201        <li>use a parser based on regular expressions, making for an inherently
202        fragile solution
203        <li>only support early versions of RSS
204        <li>discard all the interesting information besides item title, description,
205        and link.
206        <li>not build proper separation between parsing the RSS and displaying it.
207        </ul>
208        In particular I failed to find any PHP RSS parsers that could sufficiently
209        parse RSS 1.0 feeds, to be useful on the RSS based event feeds we generate
210        at <a href="http://protest.net">Protest.net</a>.
211        </p>
212        <p>
213        <a name="features"></a>
214        <h3>Features</h3>
215
216<ul>
217        <li class="toplevel">
218        <h4>Easy to Use</h4>
219        As simple as:
220<pre>
221require('rss_fetch.inc');
222$rss = fetch_rss($url);
223</pre>
224
225        </li>
226        <li class="toplevel">
227                <h4>Parses RSS 0.9 - RSS 1.0</h4>
228
229                Parses most RSS formats, including support for
230                <a href="http://www.purl.org/rss/1.0/modules/">1.0 modules</a> and limited
231                namespace support.  RSS is packed into convenient data structures; easy to
232                use in PHP, and appropriate for passing to a templating system, like
233                <a href="http://smarty.php.net">Smarty</a>.
234        </li>
235        <li>
236        <h4>Integrated Object Cache</h4>
237       
238        Caching the parsed RSS means that the 2nd request is fast, and that
239including the rss_fetch call in your PHP page won't destroy your performance,
240and force you to reply on an external cron job. And it happens transparently.
241
242        </li>
243        <li>
244        <h4>HTTP Conditional GETs</h4>
245       
246        Save bandwidth and speed up download times with intelligent use of
247        Last-Modified and ETag.<br /> See <a
248        href="http://fishbowl.pastiche.org/archives/001132.html">HTTP Conditional Get for RSS Hackers</a>
249        </li>
250       
251        <li><h4>Configurable</h4>
252       
253        Makes extensive use of constants to allow overriding default behaviour, and
254        installation on shared hosts.
255        </li>
256        <li><h4>Modular</h4>
257        <ul>
258                <li>rss_fetch.inc - wraps a simple interface (<code>fetch_rss()</code>)
259                around the library.
260                <li>rss_parse.inc - provides the RSS parser, and the RSS object
261                <li>rss_cache.inc - a simple (no GC) object cache, optimized for RSS objects
262                <li>rss_utils.inc - utility functions for working with RSS.  currently
263                provides <code>parse_w3cdtf()</code>, for parsing <a
264                href="http://www.w3.org/TR/NOTE-datetime">W3CDTF</a> into epoch seconds.
265        </ul>
266</ul>
267
268       
269        </p>
270<p>
271        <a name="philosophy"></a>
272        <h3>Magpie's approach to parsing RSS</h3>
273
274        Magpie takes a naive, and inclusive approach. Absolutely
275        non-validating, as long as the RSS feed is well formed, Magpie will
276        cheerfully parse new, and never before seen tags in your RSS feeds.
277        </p>
278        <p>
279        This makes it very simple support the varied versions of RSS simply, but
280        forces the consumer of a RSS feed to be cognizant of how it is
281        structured.(at least if you want to do something fancy)
282        </p>
283        <p>
284        Magpie parses a RSS feed into a simple object, with 4 fields:
285        <code>channel</code>, <code>items</code>, <code>image</code>, and
286        <code>textinput</code>.
287        </p>   
288        <p>
289        <h4>channel</h4>
290        <code>$rss->channel</code> contains key-value pairs of all tags, without
291        nested tags, found between the root tag (&lt;rdf:RDF&gt;, or &lt;rss&gt;)
292        and the end of the document.
293        </p>
294        <p>
295        <h4>items</h4>
296        <code>$rss->items</code> is an array of associative arrays, each one
297        describing a single item.  An example that looks like:
298        <pre>
299&lt;item rdf:about="http://protest.net/NorthEast/calendrome.cgi?span=event&#38;ID=210257"&gt;
300&lt;title&gt;Weekly Peace Vigil&lt;/title&gt;
301&lt;link&gt;http://protest.net/NorthEast/calendrome.cgi?span=event&#38;ID=210257&lt;/link&gt;
302&lt;description&gt;Wear a white ribbon&lt;/description&gt;
303&lt;dc:subject&gt;Peace&lt;/dc:subject&gt;
304&lt;ev:startdate&gt;2002-06-01T11:00:00&lt;/ev:startdate&gt;
305&lt;ev:location&gt;Northampton, MA&lt;/ev:location&gt;
306&lt;ev:enddate&gt;2002-06-01T12:00:00&lt;/ev:enddate&gt;
307&lt;ev:type&gt;Protest&lt;/ev:type&gt;
308&lt;/item&gt;
309        </pre><p>
310        Is parsed, and pushed on the <code>$rss-&gt;items</code> array as:
311        <p><pre>
312array(
313        title =&gt; 'Weekly Peace Vigil',
314        link =&gt; 'http://protest.net/NorthEast/calendrome.cgi?span=event&#38;ID=210257',
315        description =&gt; 'Wear a white ribbon',
316        dc =&gt; array (
317                        subject =&gt; 'Peace'
318                ),
319        ev =&gt; array (
320                startdate =&gt; '2002-06-01T11:00:00',
321                enddate =&gt; '2002-06-01T12:00:00',
322                type =&gt; 'Protest',
323                location =&gt; 'Northampton, MA'
324        )
325);
326</pre>
327</p>
328<p>
329<h4>image and textinput</h4>
330<code>$rss->image</code> and <code>$rss-textinput</code> are associative arrays
331including name-value pairs for anything found between the respective parent
332tags.
333</p>
334<p>
335<a name="usage"></a>
336<h3>Usage Examples:</h3>
337
338A very simple example would be:
339<pre>
340require_once 'rss_fetch.inc';
341
342$url = 'http://magpie.sf.net/samples/imc.1-0.rdf';
343$rss = fetch_rss($url);
344
345echo "Site: ", $rss->channel['title'], "&lt;br&gt;\n";
346foreach ($rss->items as $item ) {
347        $title = $item[title];
348        $url   = $item[link];
349        echo "&lt;a href=$url&gt;$title&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&lt;br&gt;\n";
350}
351</pre>
352More soon....in the meantime you can check out a
353<a href="http://www.infinitepenguins.net/rss/">cool tool built with
354MagpieRSS</a>, version 0.1.
355</p>
356<p>
357<a name="todo"></a>
358<h3>Todos</h3>
359        <h4>RSS Parser</h4>
360        <ul>
361                <li>Swap in a smarter parser that includes optional
362                support for validation, and required fields.</li>
363               
364                <li>Support RSS 2.0 (as much as I'm annoyed by it)</li>
365               
366                <li>Improve support for modules that rely on attributes</li>
367        </ul>
368       
369        <h4>RSS Cache</h4>
370        <ul>
371                <li>Light-weight garbage collection
372        </ul>
373       
374        <h4>Fetch RSS</h4>
375        <ul>
376        <li>Attempt to <a
377        href="http://diveintomark.org/archives/2002/08/15.html">auto-detect an
378        RSS feed</a>, given a URL following, much like <a
379        href="http://diveintomark.org/projects/misc/rssfinder.py.txt">rssfinder.py</a>does.
380        </li>
381        </ul>
382        <h4>Misc</h4>
383                <ul>
384                <li>More examples</li>
385                <li>A test suite</li>
386                <li>RSS generation, perhaps with <a
387        href="http://usefulinc.com/rss/rsswriter/">RSSwriter</a>?
388                </li>
389                </ul>
390       
391</p>
392<p>
393<h3>RSS Resources</h3>
394        <ul>
395        <li><a href="http://mnot.net/rss/tutorial/">RSS Tutorial for Content Publishers
396        and Webmasters</a> is a great place to start.
397        <li><a href="http://gils.utah.gov/rss/">RSS Workshop:  Publish and Syndicate
398        Your News to the Web</a> is also a good introduction</li>
399        <li><a href="http://www.disobey.com/amphetadesk/finding_more.html">Finding
400        More Channels</a> on how to find RSS feeds.
401        <li>Hammersley's <a href="http://rss.benhammersley.com/">Content Syndication
402        with XML and RSS</a> is a blog covering RSS current events.
403        <li><a href="http://groups.yahoo.com/group/rss-dev/">RSS-DEV mailing
404        list</a> is generally a very helpful, informative space, with the occasional
405        heated debate   
406        <li><a href="http://feeds.archive.org/validator/">RSS Validator</a>
407        </ul>.
408</p>
409<h3>License and Contact Info</h3>
410Magpie is distributed under the GPL license...
411<p>
412coded by: kellan (at) protest.net, feedback is always appreciated.
413<p>
414<a href="http://sourceforge.net"><img
415src="http://sourceforge.net/sflogo.php?group_id=55691&amp;type=3"
416width="125" height="37" border="0" alt="SourceForge.net Logo"></a>
417<img src="http://laughingmeme.org/magpie_views.gif">
418</body>
419</html>
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