Simple RSS parser

This is simple RSS parser and works fine. However it doesn't have possibility to set how many article header parse. Any ideas how to do it?

<?php
$insideitem = false;
$tag = "";
$title = "";
$description = "";
$link = "";
function startElement($parser, $name, $attrs) {
 global $insideitem, $tag, $title, $description, $link;
 if ($insideitem) {
  $tag = $name;
 } elseif ($name == "ITEM") {
  $insideitem = true;
 }
}
function endElement($parser, $name) {
 global $insideitem, $tag, $title, $description, $link;
 if ($name == "ITEM") {
  printf("<dt><b><a href='%s'>%s</a></b></dt>",
  trim($link),htmlspecialchars(trim($title)));
  printf("<dt>%s</dt><br><br>",htmlspecialchars(trim($description)));
  $title = "";
  $description = "";
  $link = "";
  $insideitem = false;
 }
}
function characterData($parser, $data) {
 global $insideitem, $tag, $title, $description, $link;
 if ($insideitem) {
 switch ($tag) {
  case "TITLE":
  $title .= $data;
  break;
  case "DESCRIPTION":
  $description .= $data;
  break;
  case "LINK":
  $link .= $data;
  break;
 }
 }
}
$xml_parser = xml_parser_create();
xml_set_element_handler($xml_parser, "startElement", "endElement");
xml_set_character_data_handler($xml_parser, "characterData");
$fp = fopen("http://sports.yahoo.com/rss.xml","r")
 or die("Error reading RSS data.");
while ($data = fread($fp, 4096))
 xml_parse($xml_parser, $data, feof($fp))
  or die(sprintf("XML error: %s at line %d",
   xml_error_string(xml_get_error_code($xml_parser)),
   xml_get_current_line_number($xml_parser)));
fclose($fp);
xml_parser_free($xml_parser);
?>

Code (markup):

Some person suggested me to change

while ($data = fread($fp, 4096))
 xml_parse($xml_parser, $data, feof($fp))
  or die(sprintf("XML error: %s at line %d",
   xml_error_string(xml_get_error_code($xml_parser)),
   xml_get_current_line_number($xml_parser)));

Code (markup):

to

$the_max_counter = 14;
$the_counter = 0;
while ($data = fread($fp, 4096) && $the_counter < $the_max_counter ) {
$the_counter++;
xml_parse($xml_parser, $data, feof($fp))
or die(sprintf("XML error: %s at line %d",
xml_error_string(xml_get_error_code($xml_parser)),
xml_get_current_line_number($xml_parser)));
}

Code (markup):

However it doesn't work. My browser says XML error: syntax error at line 1

 

I love magpierss, works great for me.

 

It is possible that the rss feeds you are trying to read have some XML errors (possibly due to illegal characters in one of the fields).