JoomlaRSSFilter - Joomla and nonstandard RSS elements

November 9, 2007 11:33 AM

How to get 'nonstandard' RSS elements working in Joomla's unfamiliar, locked-down world of modules ...

I'm trying to get an RSS feed displaying specific elements on a Joomla-driven site, but the stock RSS modules (MagpieRSS module for Joomla, Simple RSS Feed Reader) don't seem to play well with custom RSS elements.

Given a feed like


<item>
<title>Hey, look, I'm a title</title>
<link>http://server.com</link>
<cn:time>11/09/2007 12:10 am</cn:time>
<cn:thing1>Value 1</cn:thing1>
<cn:thing2>Value 2</cn:thing2>
<cn:thing3>Value 3</cn:thing3>
</item>

.. is there a module out there that'll give me access to elements cn:thing1-3 ? And perhaps do a little HTML work on them for linking, etc? Or am I stuck having to write my own module for this?

posted by bhance to computers & internet (2 comments total)

correct me if I'm wrong (which may very well be the case -- I don't do a lot of low-level RSS stuff), but that feed isn't up to RSS spec, and doesn't appear to be atom or RDF. In this situation, you would need a generic XML parser to get the data out and into an array or object, at which point you could output the info using whatever display resources Joomla has.

oh, duh, you said as much in your post.

Ok, here's a quick hacky fix : set up a 'proxy' script whose only job is to parse that XML into a valid RSS feed, then point the Joomla RSS parser at your local script instead of that XML feed.
posted by fishfucker at 1:27 PM on November 9, 2007

er, to be specific:

you call "proxy_script.php" which opens a cURL or other connection and grabs the XML feed, parses it, then writes a RSS file to the display.

You may need to use mod_rewrite or other means to get your feed to end in "xml" rather than php, I know some parsers can be picky about this. the other option is to have a cron job that calls a script which writes a static XML file -- actually, if you're trying to display headlines or something, this might be your best bet, because forcing the user to wait for you to make a call to a remote host for the XML can mean crappy load times or no info at all.

Also, if you're using Magpie, mind the feed caching -- more than once I've been confused about why a feed wasn't properly reflecting changes I'd made only to find that magpie had cached it.
posted by fishfucker at 1:30 PM on November 9, 2007