RSS Feed
Generating RSS / Atom-feeds is a matter of rendering a SS_List instance through the RSSFeed class.
The RSSFeed class doesn't limit you to generating article based feeds, it is just as easy to create a feed of your current staff members, comments or any other custom DataObject subclasses you have defined. The only logical limitation here is that every item in the RSS-feed should be accessible through a URL on your website, so it's advisable to just create feeds from subclasses of SiteTree.
[warning]
If you wish to generate an RSS feed that contains a DataObject, ensure you define a AbsoluteLink method on
the object.
[/warning]
Usage
Including an RSS feed has two steps. First, a Controller action which responses with the XML and secondly, the other
web pages need to link to the URL to notify users that the RSS feed is available and where it is.
An outline of step one looks like:
$feed = new RSSFeed(
$list,
$link,
$title,
$description,
$titleField,
$descriptionField,
$authorField,
$lastModifiedTime,
$etag
);
$feed->outputToBrowser();will normally go in your Controllers init method.
RSSFeed::linkToFeed($link, $title);Showing the 10 most recently updated pages
You can use RSSFeed to easily create a feed showing your latest Page updates. The following example adds a page
/home/rss/ which displays an XML file the latest updated pages.
mysite/code/Page.php
<?php
..
class Page_Controller extends ContentController {
private static $allowed_actions = array(
'rss'
);
public function init() {
parent::init();
RSSFeed::linkToFeed($this->Link() . "rss", "10 Most Recently Updated Pages");
}
public function rss() {
$rss = new RSSFeed(
$this->LatestUpdates(),
$this->Link(),
"10 Most Recently Updated Pages",
"Shows a list of the 10 most recently updated pages."
);
return $rss->outputToBrowser();
}
public function LatestUpdates() {
return Page::get()->sort("LastEdited", "DESC")->limit(10);
}
}DataObjects can be rendered in the feed as well, however, since they aren't explicitly SiteTree subclasses we
need to include a function AbsoluteLink to allow the RSS feed to link through to the item.
[info] If the items are all displayed on a single page you may simply hard code the link to point to a particular page. [/info]
Take an example, we want to create an RSS feed of all the Players objects in our site. We make sure the AbsoluteLink
method is defined and returns a string to the full website URL.
<?php
class Player extends DataObject {
public function AbsoluteLink() {
// assumes players can be accessed at yoursite.com/players/2
return Controller::join_links(
Director::absoluteBaseUrl(),
'players',
$this->ID
);
}
} <?php
class Page_Controller extends ContentController {
private static $allowed_actions = array(
'players'
);
public function init() {
parent::init();
RSSFeed::linkToFeed($this->Link("players"), "Players");
}
public function players() {
$rss = new RSSFeed(
Player::get(),
$this->Link("players"),
"Players"
);
return $rss->outputToBrowser();
}
}The default template used for XML view is framework/templates/RSSFeed.ss. This template displays titles and links to
the object. To customise the XML produced use setTemplate.
Say from that last example we want to include the Players Team in the XML feed we might create the following XML file.
mysite/templates/PlayersRss.ss
<?xml version="1.0"?>
<rss version="2.0" xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/" xmlns:atom="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom">
<channel>
<title>$Title</title>
<link>$Link</link>
<atom:link href="$Link" rel="self" type="application/rss+xml" />
<description>$Description.XML</description>
<% loop $Entries %>
<item>
<title>$Title.XML</title>
<team>$Team.Title</team>
</item>
<% end_loop %>
</channel>
</rss>mysite/code/Page.php
public function players() {
$rss = new RSSFeed(
Player::get(),
$this->Link("players"),
"Players"
);
$rss->setTemplate('PlayersRss');
return $rss->outputToBrowser();
}As we've added a new template (PlayersRss.ss) make sure you clear your SilverStripe cache. [/warning]