This past weekend, I added another news feed to blogs4God. Specifically Facing the Challenge of our times. So rather than take my own medicine from May 13, and use Perl with XML::RSSLite to read a feed, I decided to face the challenge using PHP. Specifically MagpieRSS. Works like a charm.

Afterwhich, I decided to send the nice people at Facing the Challenge (FtC) with an email asking them if they would be interested in what I did and how. This morning, I received a nice, and encouraging not from David Couchman over at FtC, who like myself, is frustrated “apparent reluctance of Christian webmasters to use RSS feeds – either by providing one from their own sites, or by incorporating feeds from other sites, such as ours.” Can I hear an amen?!

David goes on to speculate that “they perceive the whole business of RSS/XML as technically complicated.” On this point I both agree and disagree. As you know, last July I sent out ‘An Open Letter to Christian Media Outlets.’ Responses varied. The most encouraging was that from the good people who went so far as to build an API for the ESV Bible. One of the concerns expressed from more than one respondent was over theft of their intellectual property. I can’t say I blame them.

All that said, David is very correct, as I have a stack of emails from individuals who really don’t want to, don’t like to, or don’t know how to use programming languages such as Perl, Python and PHP. Which is why the good folks at FtC offer a simple singular line of javascript to include on one’s site. And why I offer to those of you who like to programmatically shoot themselves in the foot, this easy to use script, in which I couple PHP with CRON to provide you with a daily read that is both bandwidth friendly and suits your site’s demanding stylistic needs:

FeedMaggie.php
<br /> #/usr/bin/php<br /> /dev/null<br /> \* ————————————————————— */</p> <p>define(‘MAGPIE_DIR’, ‘/home/[YOUR USERNAME]/magpierss/’);<br /> require_once(MAGPIE_DIR.’rss_fetch.inc’);</p> <p>$xml = “http://www.facingthechallenge.org/ftc.xml”;<br /> $out = “magtest.inc.php”;</p> <p>WriteFeed($xml, $out);</p> <p>exit;</p> <p>function WriteFeed($uri, $filename) {<br /> $rss = fetch_rss($uri);<br /> if(!$rss) return;<br /> if($rss->ERROR) return;</p> <p> $output = “ <div>“.$rss->channel['title'].”</div> <p>\n”.<br /> “ <div>\n”;<br /> $i = 0;<br /> foreach ($rss->items as $item ) {<br /> $title = $item[title];<br /> $link = $item[link];<br /> if($title && $link) {<br /> $output .= “<a>$title</a><br />\n”;<br /> if($i++ > 5) break;<br /> }<br /> }<br /> $output .= “ <div>\n”.<br /> “<a>channel['link'].”\” >”.<br /> “&copy “.$rss->channel['title'].”</a>\n”.<br /> “</div> <p>“;</p> <p> if($i) {<br /> $handle = fopen($filename, ‘w’);<br /> if($handle) {<br /> fwrite($handle, $output);<br /> fclose($handle);<br /> }<br /> }<br /> }</p> <p>?><br />

So what about you? Are you using PHP and Cron to read feeds? If so, why not leave us a comment so we can see.