How to connect a RSS feed with a database?

let us say, we have a table database with the url,publish date and title of an article.

So can I use php inside xml files without using CDATA so that I generate the xml code from php?

For example:

<?php
$query = "SELECT * bla bla bla";
$results = mysql_query($query);

while ($row = mysql_fetch_array($results)) {

echo "<item><br>
<title>{$row['title']}</title><br>
<link>{$row['link']}</link<br>
<guid>{$row['link']}</guid><br>
<pubDate>{$row['date']}</pubDate><br>
<description>{$row['subject']}</description><br>
</item><br>";

}

?>

PHP:

Could this work?

 

Think no, but it only my idea...

 

Hey Scutari
Not sure about your echo line with the {}, but that may just be my limited knowledge on php. In short, you sure can create a dynamically updated rss feed using php. Below is an example (bu if your echo method works, your way will work I think):

<?php 
echo"<?xml version='1.0' encoding='UTF-8'?>"; ?>

<rss version="2.0" xmlns:atom="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom">

<channel>
<title>Your title</title>
<description>Your description</description>
<link>www.yourlink.com/</link>
<lastBuildDate><?php echo date(r);?></lastBuildDate>
<pubDate>Fri, 22 Aug 2008 22:47:37 +0200 [just needs to be in this format - change the values to your liking]</pubDate>
<?php 

$sql=mysql_query("SELECT * blah blah blah");

while($row = mysql_fetch_array($sql))
{

?>
<item>
<title><?php echo$row['title']; ?></title>
<description><?php $row['description']; ?></description>
<link>your link here</link>
<pubDate><?php 
//This next php code is just because my DB doesn't store the dates in the correct format.
$my_date=$row['datetime']; $my_time=strtotime($my_date);echo date("r", $my_time); ?></pubDate>
</item>
<?php
}
?>

</channel>
</rss>

Code (markup):

Change the mysql_querystring and the $row[]s to your configuration and you should be good to go. Naturally you'll also need to connect to your database
***Naturally you'll need to call your file name.php instead of name.xml

 

err lol
you need to add the part where it connects to the db and disconnects 0o lol

 

Which I also wrote.... lol

 

Hey I have tried to do what you said..but I think that the rss reader will not read the php extension..

 

That should not pose a problem. The important thing is that the first thing you declare is that this is

<?xml version='1.0' encoding='UTF-8'?> 

Code (markup):

and then that it is

<rss version="2.0" xmlns:atom="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom">

Code (markup):

That will let the rss reader know what kind of document we're talking about.