rss

[rlhanson]

I have a client which is a public relations company....
she has multiple enewsletters published in her icontact community which offers the rss subscribe feature...

How would I have her site update automatically with just the titles of the enews releases instead of the whole messages?

Any thoughts or help would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks in advance!

[charlesh]

I'm assuming that her titles and news bodies are stored somewhere in the database?

<?
$sql = "SELECT * FROM news limit 5";
$result = mysql_query($sql);
while($row = mysql_fetch_assoc($result)){
?>
 
<item>
     <title><?=$row['title']; ?></title>
     <author><?=$row['author']; ?></author>
     <link>http://MYSITE.com/news.php?id=<?=$row['id']; ?></link>
</item>
 
<?
}
?>

Just remove the author and link items. Hope this gets you pointed in the right direction.


Charles

[rlhanson]

Thanks for the response CharlesH...

Here's the webpage where her articles are located:
Anton Communications Publisher Profile - iContact Community

I want the list like what is shown in the 2nd box down on the right: "Publications"

The site offers the rss feed, but you see the whole messages - I'd like to have just the titles...

Thanks again!

[bdominick]

Lynne, if I understand correctly, your client is Anton Communications and they have an account with iContact Community, but you have no access to the source for the iContact server software. If this is so, then your best hope would be a configuration option to alter the RSS format. That is, in your account interface, maybe they let you customize the RSS output (I highly doubt this, but it would be cool).

However, even if the above is true, I can think of a potential workaround -- a way to re-feed the feed, so to speak. It's only of use if you have control over the link(s) to the feed, or if your client is the only one making use of the feed (in which case the solution is easier still). Do I have your situation right? How is the feed to be used (by your client or the public?)

[rlhanson]

Hi Brian! Thanks for your response.
Yes, I do not have access to there server software and no, they don't offer to customize the feed.

How is the feed to be used (by your client or the public?)

This is the page she has been having me update manually each time she sends out a new release:
Anton Communications - Public Relations by Genevieve Anton, Southern California

It has the client news release title, headline, and date of release.

I like it the way icontact has it displayed here:
antonpr's Member Profile - iContact Community

I found a rss to js thing last night - the results are here: test

I'm concerned about visitors who don't have javascript enabled though. I don't know how we would get the headline unless I coded some sort of id into the news release headline - if that's even possible....

I have an aggregator script someone made and let me use on another site, but it's been a couple of years and I was pretty lost on the whole concept at the time.

Just an fyi: I am doing her site maintenance (as her designer is super busy) so I have access to the ftp but not neccessarily her control panel.

Thanks so much for your help!

[bdominick]

Hi Lynn. So if you're just trying to use the feed on your client's own site, the javascript option looks pretty good. I've used it before. Yeah, some users don't have javascript enabled, but in those cases they just don't see the feed -- it's not like it screws everything up.

There is another option. You could use a server-side application to generate a custom display of the feed (titles only) and then use an iframe to include that display in the page. This option doesn't require js, though it does require a modern browser. For this method you would have to install something on the site, though -- probably I'd recommend a simple PHP script that imports and displays RSS. One that caches the RSS would be optimal, since it wouldn't require calls to the iContact server during parsing or page loading (like the js solution does). But in terms of page loading, the PHP solution should be a good bit faster than the js solution.

[bdominick]

Or, if you went with the server-side option, you could also just change the name of client_news.htm to client_news.php and call the RSS script right from the page, skipping the iframe and making the whole thing browser neutral.

[rlhanson]

Hi Brian -
Thanks for the advice. I found a php script I downloaded on Wednesday - I'll let you know how it works out once I have an opportunity to test it out!

Thanks again.

[bdominick]

Great. It should be pretty easy to tell what to alter to get just the headline/link to show up, but if it's not, feel free to paste the script here and I can show you what to alter. Sounds like you've got it figured out.

[rlhanson]

Hey Brian -

Well, turns out my client is on an asp server so I have downloaded a rss2html asp script. I don't know if it's the script or the feed but I can't get the date to show up using either the asp or the javascript solution.

So here's the page I would like it to look like:
Anton Communications - Public Relations by Genevieve Anton, Southern California

Here's the asp page:
Anton Communications - Public Relations by Genevieve Anton, Southern California

And the js page:
Anton Communications - Public Relations by Genevieve Anton, Southern California

rss2html.asp

 
<%
Response.Expires = -1
' =========== RSS2HTML.ASP for ASP/ASP.NET ==========
' copyright 2005-2008 (c) www.Bytescout.com
' version 1.26, 28 May 2008
' =========== configuration =====================
' ##### URL to RSS Feed to display #########
URLToRSS = "Anton Communications"
' ##### max number of displayed items #####
MaxNumberOfItems = 7
' ##### Main template constants
MainTemplateHeader = "<table>"
MainTemplateFooter = "</table>"
' #####
' ######################################
Keyword1 = "" ' Keyword1 = "tech" - set non-empty keyword value to filter by this keyword
Keyword2 = "" ' Keyword1 = "win" - set non-empty keyword value to filter by this 2nd keyword too
' #################################
' ##### Item template.
' ##### {LINK} will be replaced with item link
' ##### {TITLE} will be replaced with item title
' ##### {DESCRIPTION} will be replaced with item description
' ##### {DATE} will be replaced with item date and time
' ##### {COMMENTSLINK} will be replaced with link to comments (if you use RSS feed from blog)
' ##### {CATEGORY} will be replaced with item category
ItemTemplate = "<tr><td><font face=Tahoma, Humanst521 BT, Verdana, Arial><font size=2><strong>{DATE}</strong><br/><strong>{CATEGORY}<br/></strong><a href=" & """{LINK}""" & ">{TITLE}</a><BR></font></td></tr>"
' ##### Error message that will be displayed if not items etc
ErrorMessage = "Error has occured while trying to process " &URLToRSS & "<BR>Please contact web-master"
' ================================================
Set xmlHttp = Server.CreateObject("MSXML2.ServerXMLHTTP.3.0")
xmlHttp.Open "GET", URLToRSS, false
xmlHttp.Send()
RSSXML = xmlHttp.ResponseText
Set xmlDOM = Server.CreateObject("MSXML2.DomDocument.3.0")
xmlDOM.async = False
xmlDOM.validateOnParse = False
xmlDom.resolveExternals = False
If not xmlDOM.LoadXml(RSSXML) Then
ErrorMessage = "Can not load XML:" & vbCRLF & xmlDOM.parseError.reason & vbCRLF & ErrorMessage
End If
Set xmlHttp = Nothing ' clear HTTP object
Set RSSItems = xmlDOM.getElementsByTagName("item") ' collect all "items" from downloaded RSS
RSSItemsCount = RSSItems.Length-1
' if not <item>..</item> entries, then try to get <entry>..</entry>
if RSSItemsCount = -1 Then
Set RSSItems = xmlDOM.getElementsByTagName("entry") ' collect all "entry" (atom format) from downloaded RSS
RSSItemsCount = RSSItems.Length-1
End If
Set xmlDOM = Nothing ' clear XML
 
' writing Header
if RSSItemsCount > 0 then
Response.Write MainTemplateHeader
End If
j = -1
For i = 0 To RSSItemsCount
Set RSSItem = RSSItems.Item(i)
' fix for the issue when a description from a previous item 
' is used if current item description is empty provided by George Sexton
RSSdescription="&nbsp;" 
RSSCommentsLink="&nbsp;"
for each child in RSSItem.childNodes
Select case lcase(child.nodeName)
case "title"
RSStitle = child.text
case "link"
If RSSLink = "" Then
If child.Attributes.length>0 Then
RSSLink = child.GetAttribute("href")
if (RSSLink <> "") Then
if child.GetAttribute("rel") <> "alternate" Then
RSSLink = ""
End If
End If
End If ' if has attributes
If RSSLink = "" Then
RSSlink = child.text
End If
End If
case "description"
RSSdescription = child.text
case "content" ' atom format
RSSdescription = child.text
case "published"' atom format
RSSDate = child.text
case "pubdate"
RSSDate = child.text
case "comments"
RSSCommentsLink = child.text
case "category"
Set CategoryItems = RSSItem.getElementsByTagName("category")
RSSCategory = ""
for each categoryitem in CategoryItems
if RSSCategory <> "" Then
RSSCategory = RSSCategory & ", "
End If
RSSCategory = RSSCategory & categoryitem.text
Next
End Select
next
' now check filter
If (InStr(RSSTitle,Keyword1)>0) or (InStr(RSSTitle,Keyword2)>0) or (InStr(RSSDescription,Keyword1)>0) or (InStr(RSSDescription,Keyword2)>0) then
j = J+1
if J<MaxNumberOfItems then
ItemContent = Replace(ItemTemplate,"{LINK}",RSSlink)
ItemContent = Replace(ItemContent,"{TITLE}",RSSTitle)
ItemContent = Replace(ItemContent,"{DATE}",RSSDate)
ItemContent = Replace(ItemContent,"{COMMENTSLINK}",RSSCommentsLink)
ItemContent = Replace(ItemContent,"{CATEGORY}",RSSCategory)
Response.Write Replace(ItemContent,"{DESCRIPTION}",RSSDescription)
ItemContent = ""
RSSLink = ""
End if
End If
Next
' writing Footer
if RSSItemsCount > 0 then
Response.Write MainTemplateFooter
else
Response.Write ErrorMessage
End If
' Response.End ' uncomment this for use in on-the-fly output
%>

table within client_news2.asp (I didn't code the page so no laughing at the <font> tags, etc!)

<table width="90%" border="1" align="center" cellpadding="10" cellspacing="0" bordercolor="#254D67">
    <tr bgcolor="#254D67">
      <td width="35%" align="center" valign="top"><strong><font size="2" color="#ffffff" face="Tahoma, Humanst521 BT, Verdana, Arial">Client</font></strong></td>
      <td width="55%" align="center" valign="top"><strong><font size="2" color="#ffffff" face="Tahoma, Humanst521 BT, Verdana, Arial">Headline</font></strong></td>
      <td width="10%" align="center" valign="top"><strong><font size="2" color="#ffffff" face="Tahoma, Humanst521 BT, Verdana, Arial">Date</font></strong></td>
    </tr>
    <tr class="style1">
      <td width="35%" align="left" valign="top"><span class="style1"><font face="Tahoma, Humanst521 BT, Verdana, Arial">Cynthia Britain Studios</font></span></td>
      <td width="55%" align="left" valign="top"><div align="justify" class="style1"><font face="Tahoma, Humanst521 BT, Verdana, Arial"><!--#include virtual="RSS2HTML.asp"--></font></div></td>
      <td width="10%" align="center" valign="top">&nbsp;</td>
    </tr>
  </table>

Also, if I include description, then the entire e-newsletter shows up (how do I get the 1st few words?) like icontact does here:

Anton Communications Publisher Profile - iContact Community

If it's a major undertaking to help me figure this out - let me know - I will go with the js solution for now. Seems I never have easy questions!

Thanks in advance!