RSS API

For a plugin to use the builtin RSS content syndication it needs to implement three functions in functions.inc.

plugin_getfeednames_pluginname() plugin_getfeedcontent_pluginname() plugin_feedupdatecheck_pluginname()

where pluginname is the name of the plugin.

The first function plugin_getfeednames_pluginname() receives no parameters and returns a multidimensional associative array of id/name pairs where 'id' is an integer representing the plugins internal id and 'name' is what the user will see. Thus the plugin will have code like this:

function plugin_getfeednames_pluginname() { $feed = array(

   array(
     'id'       => 1,
     'name'  => 'Name of Feed'
   ),
   array(
    'id'        => 2,
    'name'   => 'Name of another feed'
   )

); return $feed; }

The second function plugin_getfeedcontent_pluginname() receives three parameters: $feed, $link, $update_data. The plugin is expected to return a multidimensional associative array holding the content of the feed and to fill in 'link' (some link that represents the same content on the site as that in the feed) and 'update_data' (to be stored for later up-to-date checks. The function will have some code like this:

function plugin_getfeedcontent_pluginname() { global $_CONF;

$link = $_CONF['site_url'] . '/pluginname/index.php'; $update_data = time(); $content=array(); foreach($ARRAY OF DATA as $s) {

  $item = array(
      'title' => $s,
      'link'  => $_CONF['site_url'] . '/pluginname/index.php'
      'text'  => $StoryText
      'uid'   => $UserID
      'date'  => $StoryDate
      'format'=> $format   #Either 'text' or 'html'
   );
   $content[]=$item;

} return $content; }

The final function plugin_feedupdatecheck_pluginname() receives $feed, $topic, $update_data, $limit where
$feed == feed number
$topic == plugin id for feed
$update_data == is data stored by the previous function
$limit == number of items to include (configurable in editor)

The function returns true if the feed is up to date and false otherwise.

Feed files will always be stored in the directory specified by $_CONF['rdf_file'].

TomW