Ivinnic / ci_rss

A CodeIgniter library for creating RSS feeds

RSS Library for CodeIgniter

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About

I needed to make an RSS feed on one of my projects but couldn't find a solution that I really liked so I built this. Hopefully someone else can find it handy too.

Installation

Copy libraries/rss2.php to libraries/ in your application folder.

Initialization

Load the library in whatever controllers you want to use it using:

$this->load->library('rss2');

Usage

RSS feeds are made up of channels and items. In this library, each of those are objects and each has their own properties.

Channels

Create a new channel with:

$channel = $this->rss2->new_channel();

You can set properties of the channel using functions like:

$channel->atom_link(current_url());
$channel->set_title("Channel Title");
$channel->set_link(current_url());
$channel->set_description("Channel Description");

You can set any attribute of the channel using:

$channel->set_attribute($key, $value, $additional_attributes=false);

The $additional_attributes param allows you to set an additional string within the rendered XML tag. For instance, the set_attribute function would roughly produce the following:

<key $additional_attributes>value</key>

Items

We get a new item by calling

$item = $channel->new_item();

You can set item properties by using functions such as

$item->set_title("Item Title");
$item->set_link("http://www.example.com/id");
$item->set_guid("item_guid");
$item->set_description("Item Description");
$item->set_author("[e-mail] (Author Name)");

You can also set any attribute of the item using:

$item->set_attribute($key, $value, $additional_attributes=false);

This will be rendered similarly to the equivilent channel function.

We add the item to the channel using

$channel->add_item($item);

Channel Images

You can add images to an entire channel as well.

Note: To generate valid feeds, you should define your channel image before your items.

To start, do

$image = $channel->new_image();

You can set various properties of the imag using functions such as

$image->set_url("http://path-to-image");
$image->set_title("Image Title");
$image->set_link("http://www.example.com");
$image->set_width("100");
$image->set_width("100");

You add the image to the channel in the same way that you added items.

$channel->add_item($image);

Rendering the Feed

After you've created your channel, channel image, and items you pack them pack into the rss2 object.

$this->rss2->pack($channel);

You can specify the response headers using the following

header($this->rss2->headers());

And finally, output the feed:

echo $this->rss2->render();
exit();