Custom news feed

[spietreser]

For a long time now, I have been looking for a way to add a newsfeed to my website that is based on certain keywords. So if the keyword is "wigs", the feed shows news articles that are about wigs.

Best would be to gather news from Google, Yahoo, etc. If that's not possible, then smaller news feeds are certainly welcome, as long as they are up to date.

Also, is there a way to include the news text on my website too?

Thanks in advance for your help!
spietreser

[Banned: LeeRyder]

You will have to (im not positive, but pretty sure) do that via the rss feeds from their sites directly:

here is the rss feed for all that is wigs from google: http://news.google.com/news?hl=en&ne...F-8&output=rss

rss only posts what they want to share. cnn is frustrating because they only show any text half the time, otherwise it says "click here for more..."

[spietreser]

Thank you for the link Lee, it appears to be exactly what I'm looking for

[Banned: LeeRyder]

your very welcome

I love RSS and the new Messenger API stuff coming out. I think that API bots are going to be the next being thing in syndication, so hopefully that will help you as well if you decide to grow in that direction as well.

[spietreser]

Hey Lee,
Sounds cool! I'm interested in knowing what this RSS in combination with Messenger API can do? What is the benefit with API bots, over the current RSS form?
Thanks in advance for the explanation!

[namestrands]

I do that very thing you are talking about, using Google RSS.

 <?php
 
$keyword = "wigs"; // you could pull the keyword from a database
 
set_time_limit(0);
 
$file = "http://news.google.com/news?sourceid=navclient&ie=UTF-8&rls=GGLG,GGLG:2005-22,GGLG:en&q=$keyword&output=rss";
 
$rss_channel = array();
$currently_writing = "";
$main = "";
$item_counter = 0;
 
function startElement($parser, $name, $attrs) {
       global $rss_channel, $currently_writing, $main;
       switch($name) {
           case "RSS":
           case "RDF:RDF":
           case "ITEMS":
               $currently_writing = "";
               break;
           case "CHANNEL":
               $main = "CHANNEL";
               break;
           case "IMAGE":
               $main = "IMAGE";
               $rss_channel["IMAGE"] = array();
               break;
           case "ITEM":
               $main = "ITEMS";
               break;
           default:
               $currently_writing = $name;
               break;
       }
}
 
function endElement($parser, $name) {
       global $rss_channel, $currently_writing, $item_counter;
       $currently_writing = "";
       if ($name == "ITEM") {
           $item_counter++;
       }
}
 
function characterData($parser, $data) {
    global $rss_channel, $currently_writing, $main, $item_counter;
    if ($currently_writing != "") {
        switch($main) {
            case "CHANNEL":
                if (isset($rss_channel[$currently_writing])) {
                    $rss_channel[$currently_writing] .= $data;
                } else {
                    $rss_channel[$currently_writing] = $data;
                }
                break;
            case "IMAGE":
                if (isset($rss_channel[$main][$currently_writing])) {
                    $rss_channel[$main][$currently_writing] .= $data;
                } else {
                    $rss_channel[$main][$currently_writing] = $data;
                }
                break;
            case "ITEMS":
                if (isset($rss_channel[$main][$item_counter][$currently_writing])) {
                    $rss_channel[$main][$item_counter][$currently_writing] .= $data;
                } else {
                    $rss_channel[$main][$item_counter][$currently_writing] = $data;
                }
                break;
        }
    }
}
 
$xml_parser = xml_parser_create();
xml_set_element_handler($xml_parser, "startElement", "endElement");
xml_set_character_data_handler($xml_parser, "characterData");
if (!($fp = fopen($file, "r"))) {
    die("could not open XML input");
}
 
while ($data = fread($fp, 4096)) {
    if (!xml_parse($xml_parser, $data, feof($fp))) {
        die(sprintf("XML error: %s at line %d",
                    xml_error_string(xml_get_error_code($xml_parser)),
                    xml_get_current_line_number($xml_parser)));
    }
}
xml_parser_free($xml_parser);
 
// output HTML
// print ("<div class=\"channelname\">" . $rss_channel["TITLE"] . "</div>"); 
 
if (isset($rss_channel["ITEMS"])) {
    if (count($rss_channel["ITEMS"]) > 0) {
        for($i = 0;$i < count($rss_channel["ITEMS"]);$i++) {
            if (isset($rss_channel["ITEMS"][$i]["LINK"])) {
            print ("\n<div class=\"itemtitle\"><a href=\"" . "go.php?url=" . $rss_channel["ITEMS"][$i]["LINK"] . "\">" . $rss_channel["ITEMS"][$i]["TITLE"] . "</a></div>");
            } else {
            print ("\n<div class=\"itemtitle\">" . $rss_channel["ITEMS"][$i]["TITLE"] . "</div>");
            }
             print ("<div class=\"itemdescription\">" . $rss_channel["ITEMS"][$i]["DESCRIPTION"] . "</div><br />");         }
    } else {
        print ("<b>There are no articles in this feed.</b>");
    }
}
 
?>  

[spietreser]

Thank you for sharing this, namestrands!

[namestrands]

no problem..

just as a note of caution if you were to use more than one keyword, for example "wig makers" you would need to change the line

$keyword = "Your Keywords";

to

$keyword = urlencode("your keywords");