Adding RSS Feeds To Build A Niche Store Content Pages

On some Build A Niche Store sites you might want to have a news page to show headlines or stories related to your niche. I see several people struggling with this and want to show you how this is done.

Copy the below code into notepad and save as testnews.php on your harddrive.

<?PHP

//$headline_style = 'news';
$headline_style = '';
$description_style = '';
$feed_url = '';
$show_detail = "";
$insideitem = "";
$tag = "";
$title = "";
$description = "";
$link = "";
$image = "";
$insideimage = "";
$max = 10;
$count = 0;

function render_news($feed_url, $showdetail, $headlinestyle, $detailstyle) {
global $show_detail, $headline_style, $detail_style, $max, $count, $insideitem,

$insideimage;
$insideitem=false;
$insideimage=false;
$count = 0;
$show_detail = $showdetail;
$headline_style = $headlinestyle;
$detail_style = $detailstyle;

$xml_parser = xml_parser_create();
xml_set_element_handler($xml_parser, "startElement", "endElement");
xml_set_character_data_handler($xml_parser, "characterData");
$fp = @fopen($feed_url,"r");
// or die("Error reading RSS data.");
if ($fp) {
while ($data = fread($fp, 4096))
xml_parse($xml_parser, $data, feof($fp))
or die(sprintf("XML error: %s at line %d",
xml_error_string(xml_get_error_code($xml_parser)),
xml_get_current_line_number($xml_parser)));
fclose($fp);
} else {
echo '<span class="top10articles">Syndicated content not available</span>';
}
echo '';

// Free up memory used by the XML parser
xml_parser_free($xml_parser);
}


function startElement($parser, $name, $attrs) {
global $insideitem, $tag, $title, $description, $link, $image, $insideimage;
if ($insideitem || $insideimage) {
$tag = $name;
}
if ($name == "ITEM" ) {
$insideitem = true;
}
if ($name == "IMAGE") {
$insideimage = true;

}
}

function endElement($parser, $name) {
global $insideitem, $tag, $title, $description, $link, $image, $insideimage,

$show_detail, $headline_style, $detail_style, $count, $max;

if ($name == "URL") {

$insideimage=false;
$image="";
} else if ($name == "ITEM" && $count < $max) {
$count++;
printf('<a href="%s" class="top10articles"

target="_blank">%s</a><br>',trim($link),trim($title));
if ($show_detail)
printf('<span

class="top10articles">%s</span><br>',trim($description));
else {
echo "";
}
$title = "";
$description = "";
$link = "";
$insideitem = false;
} else if ($count >= $max) {
$title = "";
$description = "";
$link = "";
$insideitem = false;
}
}

function characterData($parser, $data) {
global $insideitem, $tag, $title, $description, $link, $image, $insideimage;
if ($insideimage) {
switch ($tag) {
case "URL":
$image .= $data;
break;
}
}
if ($insideitem ) {
switch ($tag) {
case "TITLE":
$title .= $data;
break;
case "DESCRIPTION":
$description .= $data;
break;
case "LINK":
$link .= $data;
break;
}
}
}

?>

<style type="text/css">
<!--

/****************************************************************/

/*Main Template Links*/
A { color:#000000; text-decoration: none; }
A:hover { color:#FF0000; text-decoration: none;
}
/****************************************************************/
-->
</style>
<font size="3"><b>CNN</b></font>
<br>
<font size="2"><?
render_news("http://rss.cnn.com/rss/cnn_topstories.rss", false, 'news', 'news', 5);
?></font>
<br>
<b><font size="3">Fox News</font></b>
<br>
<font size="2"><?
render_news("http://www.foxnews.com/xmlfeed/rss/0,4313,0,00.rss", false, 'news', 'news', 5);
?></font>
<br>
<b><font size="3">Yahoo</font></b>
<br>
<font size="2"><?
render_news("http://rss.news.yahoo.com/rss/topstories", false, 'news', 'news', 5);
?></font>
<br>

Then upload the file to the root of your domain. When done load the page in your browser to see if it loads correctly.
http://www.yourdomain.com/testnews.php

If it loads the headlines, you did it correctly.

Now create a new content page in your admin section and call the link name on the right Test News and the Page URL test-news.















Now open up the footer section of the template you are using and add the code below to the very top line in the footer.

<?php
if($mainCat=="test-news"){
include("testnews.php");
}
?>

Click save and the load the new content page in your browser.

http://www.yourdomain.com/test-news

It should not be very hard to figure out how to change the feed urls in the script and you can add more feeds by just adding more lines at the bottom, following the pattern. You can also change the fonts and colors as well very easily. You should be able to tailor this to pull feeds on any content page of your site.

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