Programming Forums > Web Development and Design > PHP

titaniumdecoy · Apr 14th, 2006, 12:02 AM

My friend and I run a website for Mac users. The content is powered by pMachine. Due to a dearth of talented writers, we have decided that it would be great if we could set up a system such that when one of a select group of people posts an article to their Wordpress-powered blog, the headline of that article would show up on the main website's homepage. It would be possible but undesirable to host these blogs on the same server as the main site. I would like to know if anyone has an idea of how to go about this.

I know whenever one posts an article in Wordpress it can ping a server (such as rpc.pingomatic.com or similar). Is it possible to write a PHP script to intercept such a ping? If so, how? If I choose to solve the problem in this way, how could I prevent a post from showing up twice (if the poster clicked "Post" twice, etc.)? Should the headlines be stored in a cached file on the server? Is there a better way to go about this?

Thanks for the input.

Arevos · Apr 14th, 2006, 5:59 AM

It seems to me that RSS would be good for the job. Presumable, Wordpress supports RSS, so you could use something like MagpieRSS to parse the RSS data.

Lich · Apr 14th, 2006, 9:54 AM

RSS is definately your best bet. Forget the ping bit because I don't think that's even possible.

titaniumdecoy · Apr 14th, 2006, 1:47 PM

Thanks, I'll look into using RSS.

titaniumdecoy · Apr 15th, 2006, 2:03 PM

Can anyone recommend a free PHP script that will read multiple RSS feeds and combine them sorted by date? Or do I have to write this myself? I'm trying to do something like this or this.

BlazingWolf · Apr 15th, 2006, 2:59 PM

Best bet would be to do it yourself thats quite a niche script.

Just parse the feeds throw them into a database and sort by date.

Might require a cron job or something so that it is only update once a day, or someway to check if a certain post has already been put into the database.

Arevos · Apr 15th, 2006, 5:48 PM

It wouldn't take too long to knock a script like that up. With the Magpie RSS library, for instance:

(Toggle Plain Text)

class Article {
    var $title;
    var $date;
}
$articles = array();

$rss = fetch_rss("http://some.url");
foreach ($rss->items as $item) {
    $article = new Article;
    $article->title = $item['title'];
    $article->date = parse_w3cdtf($item['dc']['date']);
    $articles[] = article;
}

I confess my PHP knowledge of classes is a little rusty, so there may be errors in my example, but I hope that gives a starting point. Once you have arrays of all your feeds, it should be relatively easy to combine and sort them.

Alternatively, use a RSS combining website to create a new combination RSS feed and integrate that into your site.

Dameon · Apr 15th, 2006, 9:55 PM

Be sure to implement caching.

Arevos · Apr 16th, 2006, 4:51 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Dameon

Be sure to implement caching.

Magpie automatically caches feeds for an hour, I believe. Though the time it caches can be varied.

titaniumdecoy · Apr 15th, 2006, 10:13 PM

I'm not very familiar with objects or arrays in PHP. If I have a string $text which contains the string I want to display and a separate variable $date which stores the time as a string, how can I associate the two variables? And once I have an array of these objects/arrays, how can I sort them by $date? Thanks for the help.

Apr 14th, 2006, 12:02 AM	#1
titaniumdecoy Expert Programmer Join Date: Nov 2005 Posts: 930 Rep Power: 4	Combine blogs on one page? My friend and I run a website for Mac users. The content is powered by pMachine. Due to a dearth of talented writers, we have decided that it would be great if we could set up a system such that when one of a select group of people posts an article to their Wordpress-powered blog, the headline of that article would show up on the main website's homepage. It would be possible but undesirable to host these blogs on the same server as the main site. I would like to know if anyone has an idea of how to go about this. I know whenever one posts an article in Wordpress it can ping a server (such as rpc.pingomatic.com or similar). Is it possible to write a PHP script to intercept such a ping? If so, how? If I choose to solve the problem in this way, how could I prevent a post from showing up twice (if the poster clicked "Post" twice, etc.)? Should the headlines be stored in a cached file on the server? Is there a better way to go about this? Thanks for the input.

Apr 14th, 2006, 9:54 AM	#3
Lich Professional Programmer Join Date: May 2005 Location: Detroit Posts: 254 Rep Power: 4	RSS is definately your best bet. Forget the ping bit because I don't think that's even possible. __________________ --John Cruz Web Developer www.cruzweb.net

Apr 15th, 2006, 2:59 PM	#6
BlazingWolf Hobbyist Programmer Join Date: Sep 2004 Posts: 207 Rep Power: 5	Best bet would be to do it yourself thats quite a niche script. Just parse the feeds throw them into a database and sort by date. Might require a cron job or something so that it is only update once a day, or someway to check if a certain post has already been put into the database. __________________ _______________________________ BlazingWolf

Apr 15th, 2006, 5:48 PM	#7
Arevos Programming Guru Join Date: Aug 2005 Location: England Posts: 1,499 Rep Power: 5	It wouldn't take too long to knock a script like that up. With the Magpie RSS library, for instance: (Toggle Plain Text) class Article { var $title; var $date; } $articles = array(); $rss = fetch_rss("http://some.url"); foreach ($rss->items as $item) { $article = new Article; $article->title = $item['title']; $article->date = parse_w3cdtf($item['dc']['date']); $articles[] = article; } class Article { var $title; var $date; } $articles = array(); $rss = fetch_rss("http://some.url"); foreach ($rss->items as $item) { $article = new Article; $article->title = $item['title']; $article->date = parse_w3cdtf($item['dc']['date']); $articles[] = article; } I confess my PHP knowledge of classes is a little rusty, so there may be errors in my example, but I hope that gives a starting point. Once you have arrays of all your feeds, it should be relatively easy to combine and sort them. Alternatively, use a RSS combining website to create a new combination RSS feed and integrate that into your site.

Apr 15th, 2006, 9:55 PM	#8
Dameon Troll Join Date: Apr 2005 Location: Texas Posts: 732 Rep Power: 4	Be sure to implement caching. __________________ MD5(sig) = bcef75433db02e9ad9bf81d6f7c5c270

Apr 14th, 2006, 5:59 AM	#2
Arevos Programming Guru Join Date: Aug 2005 Location: England Posts: 1,499 Rep Power: 5	It seems to me that RSS would be good for the job. Presumable, Wordpress supports RSS, so you could use something like MagpieRSS to parse the RSS data.

Apr 14th, 2006, 1:47 PM	#4
titaniumdecoy Expert Programmer Join Date: Nov 2005 Posts: 930 Rep Power: 4	Thanks, I'll look into using RSS.

Apr 15th, 2006, 2:03 PM	#5
titaniumdecoy Expert Programmer Join Date: Nov 2005 Posts: 930 Rep Power: 4	Can anyone recommend a free PHP script that will read multiple RSS feeds and combine them sorted by date? Or do I have to write this myself? I'm trying to do something like this or this.

Apr 15th, 2006, 10:13 PM	#10
titaniumdecoy Expert Programmer Join Date: Nov 2005 Posts: 930 Rep Power: 4	I'm not very familiar with objects or arrays in PHP. If I have a string $text which contains the string I want to display and a separate variable $date which stores the time as a string, how can I associate the two variables? And once I have an array of these objects/arrays, how can I sort them by $date? Thanks for the help.

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Programming Forums > Web Development and Design > PHP

Combine blogs on one page?