Re: Got lost on rss

--- In [email protected], "Bill Kearney" <ml_yahoo@i...> wrote:
> > on 12/31/2004 11:01 PM maz said the following:
> > > Either I need something that works with Magpie, although I don't really
> understand what it
> > > all does. Or does xpath2rss do everything I need, or do I need both to
> make the rss work?
> > >
> > > This is the closest I've got to getting rss feed from the database, I'm
> not a backend
> > > developer, I need a working example to follow or simple instructions to
> piece together or a
> > > volunteer with experience.
> >
> > Why don't you just generate a real RSS feed instead of hacking your page
> >   XHTML output?
> 
> There's real value to this idea.  But there are situations where someone
> might not use it.  For example, if someone doesn't have the access or the
> ability to get to the database directly it might only be possible to use the
> web page.  Using web pages this way, scraping as it's known, is not all that
> great an idea.  You're limited to using only the data that's present on the
> web page.  Many times the database will have better information like dates,
> times, categories or other that aren't on the web pages.  Or the web page
> formats them in ways that are exceedingly difficult to reformat for proper
> use in a feed (like character encodings, dates, etc...).  Finally, the worst
> thing about using web page scraping is being dependent on the formatting of
> the web page.  If even slight changes are made to the web page layout it
> will usually cause a scraper to fail.  There are ways to work around this
> but, frankly, the work is better spent on getting actual database access
> instead of scraping.
> 
> If it's your own site and you have access to it's database then it's much
> better to go that route.
> 
> -Bill Kearney
> Syndic8.com

Bill, 

Getting feed from the database worked out best, and it was easy to understand on 
rss2.com I have worked with similar mods. The more advanced php was beyond me.

Now I need some code help to join my tables, I don't know if this is the place to ask. In 
example rss20.php I have "link=" then "SELECT id AS Link". I have 7 tables with different 
urls I would like to use. I wrote the file out 7 times creating 7 feeds;) I'd prefer to make it 
one feed for the site.

Thanks for all the help,
maz
http://www.mercuryexposure.org










 
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