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Introduction

Required for one of my projects, I decided to develop my own Yii extension to create RSS Feeds. I knew there is already one but I wanted something easier to use than that. This is why I came up with EFeed Extension. This extension supports RSS 1.0, RSS 2.0, and ATOM 1.0 standards.

How to Use

I assume that you have downloaded the extension and place it on your protected/extensions folder.

RSS 1.0 Example

Yii::import('ext.feed.*');
// specify feed type
$feed = new EFeed(EFeed::RSS1);
$feed->title = 'Testing the RSS 1 EFeed class';
$feed->link = 'http://www.ramirezcobos.com';
$feed->description = 'This is test of creating a RSS 1.0 feed by Universal Feed Writer';
$feed->RSS1ChannelAbout = 'http://www.ramirezcobos.com/about';
// create our item
$item = $feed->createNewItem();
$item->title = 'The first feed';
$item->link = 'http://www.yiiframework.com';
$item->date = time();
$item->description = 'Amaz-ii-ng <b>Yii Framework</b>';
$item->addTag('dc:subject', 'Subject Testing');
 // add it to the feed
$feed->addItem($item);
$feed->generateFeed();

As you can see in the example above, we just need to create items and add them to the feed. The example could be easily modified to add items extracted from a database and add them to the Feed in a loop.

RSS 2.0 Example

Yii::import('ext.feed.*');
// RSS 2.0 is the default type
$feed = new EFeed();
$feed->title= 'Testing RSS 2.0 EFeed class';
$feed->description = 'This is test of creating a RSS 2.0 Feed';
$feed->setImage(
'Testing the EFeed class',
'http://www.ramirezcobos.com',
'http://www.yiiframework.com/forum/uploads/profile/photo-7106.jpg');
$feed->addChannelTag('language', 'en-us');
$feed->addChannelTag('pubDate', date(DATE_RSS, time()));
$item = $feed->createNewItem();
$item->title = "first Feed";
$item->link = "http://www.yahoo.com";
$item->date = time();
$item->description = 'This is test of adding ' .
          'CDATA Encoded description <b>EFeed Extension</b>';
// this is just a test!!
$item->setEncloser(
      'http://www.tester.com',
     '1283629', 'audio/mpeg');
$item->addTag(
     'author',
     'thisisnot@myemail.com (Antonio Ramirez)');
$item->addTag(
     'guid',
     'http://www.ramirezcobos.com',
     array('isPermaLink'=>'true'));
$feed->addItem($item);
$feed->generateFeed();

ATOM 1.0 Example

Yii::import('ext.feed.*');
$feed = new EFeed(EFeed::ATOM);
// IMPORTANT : No need to add id for feed or channel.
// It will be automatically created from link.
$feed->title = 'Testing the ATOM RSS EFeed class';
$feed->link = 'http://www.ramirezcobos.com';
$feed->addChannelTag('updated', date(DATE_ATOM, time()));
$feed->addChannelTag('author', array('name'=>'Antonio Ramirez Cobos'));
$item = $feed->createNewItem();
$item->title = 'The first Feed';
$item->link  = 'http://www.ramirezcobos.com';
// we can also insert well formatted date strings
$item->date ='2010/24/12';
$item->description = 'Test of CDATA Encoded description <b>EFeed Extension</b>';
$feed->addItem($item);
$feed->generateFeed();

Download

To download the extension go to Yii’s extension repository. Hope this little piece of code can help your project needs somehow.

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