For instance,
other feeds might contain elements describing the feed??™s update interval, language,
and creator. However, for the purposes of the examples found in this chapter, it
makes sense to remove those components that have little bearing on instruction.
Now that you??™re a bit more familiar with the purpose and advantages of RSS, you??™ll
next learn how to use PHP to incorporate RSS into your own development strategy.
Although there are numerous RSS tools written for the PHP language, one in particular
offers an amazingly effective solution for retrieving, parsing, and displaying feeds:
MagpieRSS.
Introducing MagpieRSS
MagpieRSS (Magpie for short) is a powerful RSS parser written in PHP by Kellan Elliott-
McCrea. It??™s freely available for download via http://magpierss.sourceforge.net/ and is
distributed under the GPL license. Magpie offers developers an amazingly practical
and easy means for retrieving and rendering RSS feeds, as you??™ll soon see. In addition,
Magpie offers to users a number of cool features, including the following:
Simplicity: Magpie gets the job done with a minimum of effort by the developer.
For example, typing a few lines of code is all it takes to begin retrieving, parsing,
and converting RSS feeds into an easily readable format.
Nonvalidating: If the feed is well formed, Magpie will successfully parse it. This
means that it supports all tag sets found within the various RSS versions, as well
as your own custom tags.
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