How to retrieve data from feed using php

If you want to get data from feed and show on your website. There are few steps to follow.

Requirement:

Localhost (Xampp/Wamp) or Online host
Feed url something like http://feeds.feedburner.com/ours2ptech . It may be different
Basic knowledge php
Some time (30 Mins)

If you have fulfill all requirement. Then lets try to make a feed parser. I am taking example of retrieving BBC news from feed.
If you are running localhost. Then start xampp or wamp.
I have a BBC new feed like http://feeds.bbci.co.uk/news/rss.xml. When you open this link. You will not see its data in xml format. You can see it by view source.
Click Ctrl+u on keyboard. You can see its xml.
Now you are ready to start. Follow these steps

Create a folder in htdocs. You can give any name. For example s2pfeed.
Create a page index.php . I write php codes in this page.
We are retrieving data from other websites or feeds. So i am using curl. This is the best way to carry data from other websites. We can use php inbuilt class SimpleXmlElement to extract xml data.
Flow chart: FeedUrl ----- Curl data ---- Data array

try{
$ch = curl_init("http://feeds.bbci.co.uk/news/rss.xml");
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, true);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HEADER, 0);
$data = curl_exec($ch);
curl_close($ch);
$doc = new SimpleXmlElement($data, LIBXML_NOCDATA);
}
catch(Exception $e)
{
  echo 'Invalid Feed';
  //exit;
}

Before move to next step. Check carefully source code of feedurl. You will see something like following

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<?xml-stylesheet title="XSL_formatting" type="text/xsl" href="/shared/bsp/xsl/rss/nolsol.xsl"?>
<rss xmlns:media="http://search.yahoo.com/mrss/" xmlns:atom="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom" version="2.0">
<channel>
<title>BBC News - Home</title>
<link>http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/#sa-ns_mchannel=rss&amp;ns_source=PublicRSS20-sa</link>
<description>The latest stories from the Home section of the BBC News web site.</description>
<language>en-gb</language>
<lastBuildDate>Wed, 19 Feb 2014 20:57:35 GMT</lastBuildDate>
<copyright>Copyright: (C) British Broadcasting Corporation, see http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/help/rss/4498287.stm for terms and conditions of reuse.</copyright>
<image>
<url>http://news.bbcimg.co.uk/nol/shared/img/bbc_news_120x60.gif</url>
<title>BBC News - Home</title>
<link>http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/#sa-ns_mchannel=rss&amp;ns_source=PublicRSS20-sa</link>
<width>120</width>
<height>60</height>
</image>
<ttl>15</ttl>
<atom:link href="http://feeds.bbci.co.uk/news/rss.xml" rel="self" type="application/rss+xml"/>
<item>
<title>Blair 'advised Brooks before arrest'</title>
<description>Former Prime Minister Tony Blair gave advice to News International boss Rebekah Brooks on handling the developing phone-hacking scandal days before her arrest, a court hears.</description>
<link>http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-26259956#sa-ns_mchannel=rss&amp;ns_source=PublicRSS20-sa</link>
<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-26259956</guid>
<pubDate>Wed, 19 Feb 2014 16:24:51 GMT</pubDate>
<media:thumbnail width="66" height="49" url="http://news.bbcimg.co.uk/media/images/73083000/jpg/_73083312_021157970-1.jpg"/>
<media:thumbnail width="144" height="81" url="http://news.bbcimg.co.uk/media/images/73086000/jpg/_73086069_021157970-1.jpg"/>
</item>
<item><title>Ukraine president sacks army chief</title>
<description>Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych sacks the head of the armed forces, amid protests that have turned Kiev into a battle zone.</description>
<link>http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-26265808#sa-ns_mchannel=rss&amp;ns_source=PublicRSS20-sa</link>
<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-26265808</guid>
<pubDate>Wed, 19 Feb 2014 20:09:37 GMT</pubDate>
<media:thumbnail width="66" height="49" url="http://news.bbcimg.co.uk/media/images/73097000/jpg/_73097274_73097252.jpg"/> 
<media:thumbnail width="144" height="81" url="http://news.bbcimg.co.uk/media/images/73097000/jpg/_73097275_73097252.jpg"/>
</item>
.
.
.
<item> ... </item>

This is making chain like

xml
channel
title
link
description
...
item
title
description
link
guid --- isPermaLink
pubDate
media --- thumbnail

Item node represents individual post on feed. Now come back to php coding. Check above mentioned curl script.

$doc = new SimpleXmlElement($data, LIBXML_NOCDATA);

Here $doc is an instance carrying all data of xml.

If you want to get data of channel such as title, link, description and etc.

Use following code.

$title = $doc->channel->title;
$link = $doc->channel->link;
$description = $doc->channel->description;

If you want to retrieve single recent item (post) data

Use following code

$title = $doc->channel->item[0]->title;
$description = $doc->channel->item[0]->description;
$link = $doc->channel->item[0]->link;

You can retrieve all data.

But if you want to retrieve multiple recent post data

Use following code

$cnt = count($doc->channel->item); // this variable contains total number of posts showing in this feed
for($i=0; $i<$cnt; $i++)
    {
 $url  = $doc->channel->item[$i]->link;
 $title  = $doc->channel->item[$i]->title;
 $desc = $doc->channel->item[$i]->description;
 $pubDate = $doc->channel->item[$i]->pubDate;
     }

But you cannot retrieve node like

<media:thumbnail width="66" height="49" url="http://news.bbcimg.co.uk/media/images/73083000/jpg/_73083312_021157970-1.jpg"/>

What can we do? Very simple. Do some tricks.

In this node, you have two things namespace (media) seperated by colon (:) and some attributes.

To retrieve data from namespaces media, Check the second line of feed source code.

<rss xmlns:media="http://search.yahoo.com/mrss/" xmlns:atom="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom" version="2.0">

Get url from media and url is http://search.yahoo.com/mrss/ .

Now your php code:

$media = $doc->channel->item[$i]->children('http://search.yahoo.com/mrss/')->thumbnail;

Is it return any value. Answer is no. Actually values are here in form of attributes.
So,

$thumb = $media->attributes();$thumburl = $thumb['url'];$thumbwidth = $thumb['width'];

Here in this feed there are multiple media. So you can use following code to retrieve media data

$thumbcount = count($media);
for($j=0;$j<=$thumbcount;$i++)
{
    $thumb = $media[$j]->attributes();
    $thumburl = $thumb['url'];
    $thumbwidth = $thumb['width'];
}

That's it.
Check complete code here:

<?php
try{
$ch = curl_init("http://feeds.bbci.co.uk/news/rss.xml");
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, true);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HEADER, 0);
$data = curl_exec($ch);
curl_close($ch);
$doc = new SimpleXmlElement($data, LIBXML_NOCDATA);
}
catch(Exception $e)
{
  echo 'Invalid Feed';
  //exit;
}
$cnt = count($doc->channel->item); // this variable contains total number of posts showing in this feed
for($i=0; $i<$cnt; $i++)
    {
 $url  = $doc->channel->item[$i]->link;
 $title  = $doc->channel->item[$i]->title;
 $desc = $doc->channel->item[$i]->description;
 $pubDate = $doc->channel->item[$i]->pubDate;
$cnt = count($doc->channel->item); // this variable contains total number of posts showing in this feed
for($i=0; $i<$cnt; $i++)
    {
 $url  = $doc->channel->item[$i]->link;
 $title  = $doc->channel->item[$i]->title;
 $desc = $doc->channel->item[$i]->description;
 $pubDate = $doc->channel->item[$i]->pubDate;
                  $media = $doc->channel->item[$i]->children('http://search.yahoo.com/mrss/')->thumbnail;

$thumbcount = count($media);
for($j=0;$j<=$thumbcount;$i++)
{
    $thumb = $media[$j]->attributes();
    $thumburl = $thumb['url'];
    $thumbwidth = $thumb['width'];
}

     }
    }

?>

I think, this is a complete feed parser for you.
If you have any query. Please comment. I will try to give response as soon as possible.

How to retrieve data from feed using php

Requirement:

If you want to get data of channel such as title, link, description and etc.

If you want to retrieve single recent item (post) data

You can retrieve all data.

What can we do? Very simple. Do some tricks.

Now your php code:

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