GS Blog v1.4

[stevenjaycohen]

Congratulations! Your RSS feeds validate against the incredibly picky feed validator (with a few warnings): http://feedvalidator.org/check.cgi?url=h...%2Frss.rss

Any idea how I get rid of that title warning if I am not using categories? Could you insert site_name if there is no category?

Below, I am pasting a function that I wrote for a different CMS that seemed to pass with no warnings in all cases. Maybe it could help you refine your feed?

Code:

    public function rssFeed() {
        header("Content-Type: application/rss+xml; charset=ISO-8859-1");
        $system = $this->getSystemSettings();
        $rssfeed = '<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1"?>';
        $rssfeed .= '<rss version="2.0" xmlns:atom="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom">';
        $rssfeed .= '<channel>';
        $rssfeed .= '<atom:link href="http://'.$system['url'].'/feed/" rel="self" type="application/rss+xml" />';
        $rssfeed .= '<title>'.$system['title'].'</title>';
        $rssfeed .= '<link>http://'.$system['url'].'</link>';
        $rssfeed .= '<description>'.$system['description'].'</description>';
        $rssfeed .= '<language>'.$system['language'].'</language>';
        $rssfeed .= '<copyright>Copyright (C) '.date("Y", time()).' '.$system['url'].'</copyright>';

        //40 items seems to be the limit that some Feed Readers will accept
        $query = "SELECT title, body, log_time FROM entries ORDER BY log_time DESC LIMIT 20";
        $result = sqlite_query($query) or die ("Could not execute query");

        while($row = sqlite_fetch_array($result)) {
            $title = $this->cleanString($row['title']);
            $body = $this->cleanString($row['body']);

            $rssfeed .= '<item>';
            $rssfeed .= '<title>' . $title . '</title>';
            $rssfeed .= '<link>http://'.$system['url'].'/#!' . $row['log_time'] . '</link>';
            $rssfeed .= '<description>' . $body . '</description>';
            $rssfeed .= '<guid>http://'.$system['url'].'/#!' . $row['log_time'] . '</guid>';
            $rssfeed .= '<pubDate>' . date("D, d M Y H:i:s O", $row['log_time']) . '</pubDate>';
            $rssfeed .= '</item>';
        }

        $rssfeed .= '</channel>';
        $rssfeed .= '</rss>';

        echo $rssfeed;
    }

I also have a more customized podcast feed generator that passed with zero warnings (much harder to achieve. Hope it is helpful:

Code:

    public function podcastFeed($feedName) {
        $query_string="SELECT * FROM podcasts WHERE tag='".$feedName."' limit 1";
        if (!$result_string = sqlite_query($query_string)) {
            // Display error since this is the only one that can be seen live
            trigger_error("Cannot complete your search request (".sqlite_error_string().") Query=".$query_string);
        }else{
            while ($feed = sqlite_fetch_all($result_string)) {
                $system = $this->getSystemSettings();
                $url = $system['url'];
                $query_string="SELECT log_time FROM entries, podcasts WHERE podcasts.tag='".$feedName."' AND entries.podcast_id=podcasts.id ORDER BY entries.id DESC LIMIT 1";
                if (!$result_string = sqlite_query($query_string)) {
                    // Display error since this is the only one that can be seen live
                    trigger_error("Cannot complete your search request (".sqlite_error_string().") Query=".$query_string);
                }else{
                    while ($row = sqlite_fetch_all($result_string)) {
                        $pubDate = $row['log_time'];
                    }
                }
                header("Content-Type: application/rss+xml; charset=UTF-8");
    
                $podcastfeed = '<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>';
    
                $podcastfeed .= '<rss version="2.0" xmlns:itunes="http://www.itunes.com/dtds/podcast-1.0.dtd" xmlns:atom="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom">';
                $podcastfeed .= '<channel>';
                $podcastfeed .= '<atom:link href="http://'.$system['url'].'/feed/podcast.php?name='.$feedName.'" rel="self" type="application/rss+xml" />';
//                 $podcastfeed .= '<atom:link href="http://www.stevenjaycohen.com/feed/podcast.php?name='.$feedName.'" rel="self" type="application/rss+xml" />';
    
                $podcastfeed .= '<title>'.$feed['title'].'</title>';
                $podcastfeed .= '<description>'.$feed['description'].'</description>';
                $podcastfeed .= '<link>http://'.$system['url'].'</link>';
    
                $podcastfeed .= '<language>'.$system['language'].'</language>';
                $podcastfeed .= '<copyright>Copyright (C) '.date("Y", time()).' '.$system['url'].'</copyright>';
                $podcastfeed .= '<lastBuildDate>'.date("D, d M Y H:i:s O", time()).'</lastBuildDate>';
                $podcastfeed .= '<pubDate>'.date("D, d M Y H:i:s", $pubDate).' GMT</pubDate>';
                $podcastfeed .= '<docs>http://'.$system['url'].'/feed/podcast/?name='.$feedName.'</docs>';
                $podcastfeed .= '<webMaster>'.$system['email'].' ('.$system['owner'].')</webMaster>';
    
                $podcastfeed .= '<itunes:author>'.$system['owner'].'</itunes:author>';
                $podcastfeed .= '<itunes:subtitle>'.$feed['itunes_subtitle'].'</itunes:subtitle>';
                $podcastfeed .= '<itunes:summary>'.$feed['itunes_summary'].'</itunes:summary>';
    
                $podcastfeed .= '<itunes:owner>';
                $podcastfeed .= '<itunes:name>'.$system['owner'].'</itunes:name>';
                $podcastfeed .= '<itunes:email>'.$system['email'].'</itunes:email>';
                $podcastfeed .= '</itunes:owner>';
    
                $podcastfeed .= '<itunes:explicit>'.$feed['itunes_explicit'].'</itunes:explicit>';
                $podcastfeed .= '<itunes:image href="http://'.$system['url']."/".$feed['itunes_image'].'"/>';
                $podcastfeed .= '<itunes:category text="'.$feed['itunes_category_1'].'">';
                $podcastfeed .= '<itunes:category text="'.$feed['itunes_category_2'].'"/>';
                $podcastfeed .= '</itunes:category>';
                $podcastfeed .= '<itunes:new-feed-url>http://'.$system['url'].'/feed/podcast.php?name=drwho</itunes:new-feed-url>';
    
                //40 items seems to be the limit that some Feed Readers will accept
                $query = "SELECT entries.title, body, log_time, podcast_file, podcast_length, itunes_duration FROM entries, podcasts WHERE podcasts.tag='".$feedName."' AND podcast_id=podcasts.id ORDER BY log_time DESC";
                $result = sqlite_query($query) or die ("Could not execute query");
    
                while($row = sqlite_fetch_array($result)) {
                    $title = $this->cleanString($row['title']);
                    $body = $this->cleanString($row['body']);
                    $subtitle = $body;
                    if (strlen($body)>255){
                        $subtitle = substr($body, 0, 250)."...";
                    }else{
                        $subtitle = $body;
                    }
    
                    $podcastfeed .= '<item>';
                    $podcastfeed .= '<title>' . $title . '</title>';
                    $podcastfeed .= '<link>http://'.$system['url'].'/#!' . $row['log_time'] . '</link>';
                    $podcastfeed .= '<guid>http://'.$system['url'].'/' . $row['podcast_file'] . '</guid>';
                    $podcastfeed .= '<description>' . $body . '</description>';
                    $podcastfeed .= '<enclosure url="http://'.$system['url'].'/'.$row['podcast_file'].'" length="'.$row['podcast_length'].'" type="audio/mpeg"/>';
                    $podcastfeed .= '<category>Podcasts</category>';
                    $podcastfeed .= '<pubDate>' . date("D, d M Y H:i:s O", $row['log_time']) . ' </pubDate>';
                    $podcastfeed .= '<itunes:author>'.$system['owner'].'</itunes:author>';
                    $podcastfeed .= '<itunes:explicit>'.$feed['itunes_explicit'].'</itunes:explicit>';
                    $podcastfeed .= '<itunes:subtitle>'.$subtitle.'</itunes:subtitle>';
                    $podcastfeed .= '<itunes:summary>'.$body.'</itunes:summary>';
                    $podcastfeed .= '<itunes:duration>'.$row['itunes_duration'].'</itunes:duration>';
                    $podcastfeed .= '<itunes:keywords>'.$feed['itunes_keywords'].'</itunes:keywords>';
                    $podcastfeed .= '</item>';
                }
                $podcastfeed .= '</channel>';
    
                $podcastfeed .= '</rss>';
    
                echo $podcastfeed;
            }
        }
    }

---

Any thoughts about a tag or category list or cloud for the sidebar?

I did a tag list manually at sjc.sdf.org.

I think the ideal time to generate the list would be during entry creation. Scan through the entries and collect the tags, write it to a file at that time.

If you tried to generate the tag list at rendering time, it would probably slow the loading of the page.

What do you think?