RSS 2 Joomla / Mambo import script

Ty2u · **Joined:** Tue Aug 23, 2005 6:41 am **Posts:** 519

For those that cant figure this out...

I read the thread here and have absolutely no problem figuring this out.

Simply upload the script anywhere you want and type that url location into your browser.

This adds all the feeds to the database of your Joomla into a category / section which you specify in the script.

Very simple and easy to understand. Upload, go there, and presto, providing you set it up properly you now have those feeds entered in as content items in the specified category.

If you get an RSS.php error, ask your host if they have PHP Pear XML_RSS http://pear.php.net/package/XML_RSS library.

You can do anything you want, accomplish anything you could possibly dream, have everything you desire, as long as you learn what you need to learn and realize thats all you need and you will get there eventually if you never give up. Have patience, good things come with time and there is no shortage of people willing to help here.

jaydt · **Joined:** Sun Dec 11, 2005 3:45 pm **Posts:** 12

Well I'm hosting it myself so have nobody to ask if i've got the Pear stuff installed - there aren't any intructions on how to do that either. There are no instructions on how to install this either. I'm eager to learn and want to get it working but when nobody can be bothered to write documentation (remember in the old days when you'd get an Install section, a FAQ and even Troubleshooting?). Without this information how am I supposed to learn.

I don't understand why there is a simple WordPress plugin to do it, Drupal will do it out of the box yet with Joomla you have to jump through hoops, spend hours and hours on trail and error and still not get anywhere. It's really anoying for you to just tel me to 'never give up' when I've been trying to find a solution for over a week! If anybody can be bothered to either of the following things I'm sure it would benefit the community:

- Turn it into a component
- Write some documentation or a setup tutorial

I'm already moving to Drupal - I might reconsider if this is done, if it's not I'm sure I won't be the only one!

Ty2u · **Joined:** Tue Aug 23, 2005 6:41 am **Posts:** 519

I just dont see how complex this can be to need anymore documentation than there is already here but I will make it more simple for you.

Step 1.
Go through the script and configure the variables.

Step 2.
Upload the script and go to this url in your browser.

Step 3.
If you get a blank screen check for content in Joomla in the sections you conigured it to go to in the script. You were likely successful.

If you get errors try the following:

I did as he said and simply uploaded the files from the url he provided to the same directory as the script.

Try simply uploading this http://pear.php.net/get/XML_Parser-1.2.7.tgz and http://pear.php.net/get/XML_RSS-0.9.9.tgz to the same directory the script is in.

If this doesnt work then best of luck with Drupal.

eugene33 · **Posted:** Mon Dec 12, 2005 12:46 pm

Same here, I had some problem at first, but just to discover that my hosting service didn't provide the necessary package for RSS, so I moved. I configured the script as it was writing in, upload it, linked it and it worked just fine.
I hacked it to get some nice email and now I'm trying to figure how to use cron (I would value some advices about that, by the way

) but for the script it work perfectly.

jaydt · **Joined:** Sun Dec 11, 2005 3:45 pm **Posts:** 12

So I have,

- Created a folder called 'parser' in my htdocs folder

- Placed the 2 above mentioned sets of files in this folder along with the rss2joomla.php.txt

- Renamed and updated the rss2joomla.php file with my database info, Section ID #1 & Category ID #1

- I go to /parser/rss2joomla.php and get a blank page

My Joomla site is still empty - what am I doing wrong?

jbsarma · **Joined:** Sun Nov 20, 2005 5:58 pm **Posts:** 28

I know this script work but myself not being successful so far.

I do get a blank screen when call the script - I am told this is good sign as there is no error message. But I do not get any content addedd to the respective section and category. Can anybody explain what may be the reason!!

jaydt · **Joined:** Sun Dec 11, 2005 3:45 pm **Posts:** 12

Surely there must be somebudy that can help with this? If it works for some and not for others we must be doing it wrong - all we need is a little help. If we can't get it working, are there any alternatives, even commercial?

jaydt · **Joined:** Sun Dec 11, 2005 3:45 pm **Posts:** 12

Right - have managed to get it working by changing "XSL/Parser.php" to "Parser.php" in the RSS.php file - great!

jbsarma · **Joined:** Sun Nov 20, 2005 5:58 pm **Posts:** 28

Good to know it is working for you.

But it would not in my case. I do not get any error but nothing get entered into the database either. Really puzzled.

jaydt · **Joined:** Sun Dec 11, 2005 3:45 pm **Posts:** 12

Are you making sure you change all the info at the bottom of the rss2joomla.php file - I got stuck where it asks for the author ID - accidently put in my name rather than looking up the actual ID

jbsarma · **Joined:** Sun Nov 20, 2005 5:58 pm **Posts:** 28

jaydt wrote:

Are you making sure you change all the info at the bottom of the rss2joomla.php file - I got stuck where it asks for the author ID - accidently put in my name rather than looking up the actual ID

hello jaydit, thanks. Yes, I changed all the variables including the ones section (1), category (1) and author (66) - all in numbers. Very strange. No error displayed but no entry either.

jaydt · **Joined:** Sun Dec 11, 2005 3:45 pm **Posts:** 12

Not sure what to suggest I'm afraid, sorry.

On another topic I have a question for the more experienced users. As it is most RSS feeds only give the begining of the actual news item, obviously there's no way to get the full article (and that's not what I want anyway) but can I can the "Read More" link on my site forward directly to the article on the original site rather than showing the synopsis full page? Thanks in advance

eugene33 · **Posted:** Mon Dec 12, 2005 11:46 pm

samyot wrote:

ghandi wrote:

I can't get the second 'read on' link that goes to the feed article (offsite)

It won't show up in the maintext. I have tried several templates on Joomla 1.03 and mucked around with the code a lot but am getting nowhere. I even tried a number of feeds with no luck.

Anybody have any ideas? These are some parameters from the code. I don't see a $link anywhere.

$titletext
$introtext
$maintext
$publishdate

Hi,

What I did was add the following code:

Around line 88
$link = addslashes($item['link']);

Around line 130, replace
'". $maintext ."',
with

'". $maintext . "

Read more...',

This should help you !?!

jaydt · **Joined:** Sun Dec 11, 2005 3:45 pm **Posts:** 12

Thanks for getting back so quick. That works great!

faiyaz · **Joined:** Wed Nov 16, 2005 12:06 am **Posts:** 10

Amazing script - thanks very much!

Here is how I got it to work on a dedicated server I have access to:

1. I installed the required scripts using ssh and following command: pear install XML_Tree XML_RSS

2. Then i located where RSS.php file was installed by following command: find -name 'RSS.php'
It told me that it was here: /usr/local/lib/php/XML/RSS.php

3. I put this as the path in typera's script file (and changed other required items;mysql stuff, category id etc)

4. Uploaded typera's script to a folder on my server and typed the URL. It gave me an error that said it could not find the XML/Parser.php file. I downloaded the RSS.php and corrected the path to " require_once 'Parser.php'; "

5. Uploaded the RSS.php and retried the URL - got another error, this time saying it couldn't find the Pear.php file. So I downloaded the Parser.php and corrected the path to " require_once '/usr/local/lib/php/PEAR.php'; "

6. I uploaded the Parser.php back to its location and retried

7. I got a blank screen and no error message

8. Checked my Joomla! site and amazingly my feed content had been inserted!

(above method may be a bit convoluted, and may have worked better if I ftp'd the XML_tree and XML_RSS into same folder as some others have posted)

Very happy, nice job and thanks again to typera

eugene33 · **Posted:** Thu Dec 15, 2005 3:49 pm

Just for info, and for those like me with hosting provider who don't want to activate Parser.php, you may have a look to http://feedonfeeds.com/ Feed on Feeds.
Of course there is nothing like RSS2Joomla but this may be a start for a future component

well that's my 2 cents idea of the day

stevebor1 · **Joined:** Fri Dec 02, 2005 10:22 pm **Posts:** 59

First off it was a breeze to install. i had to add Pear, and just followed the instructions.
1. rran at command line $ lynx -source http://go-pear.org/ | php
hit enter afew times till it installed all.
2. uploaded my rss2joomla.php to my home/site/public_html
3. put that link n my browser, page went blank. looked in my joomla, and noticed it imported as static content.

My question is that it imported the news, but as static content for each news item. can that be changed, like into one news item?

orty · **Posted:** Thu Dec 22, 2005 8:12 pm

Read through this whole thread, am looking forward to playing with it and using it (and I'm comfortable in PHP and installing modules, so i'll be OK) .

My one comment: Is this going to support Atom feeds at some point?

EDIT: Nevermind. Looking at the code, it appears that XML_RSS is doing most of the processing, so it would have to support Atom feeds (which I don't know if it does -- will check the docs on that).

stevebor1 · **Joined:** Fri Dec 02, 2005 10:22 pm **Posts:** 59

found it! added category and section #'s

orty · **Posted:** Thu Dec 22, 2005 9:07 pm

OK, from what I can tell on this script, you can only have one RSS feed declared in the rss2joomla.php file. Now I'm considering using this script to replace an aggregated content site I have at http://www.bendblogs.com. So would I have to have a copy of this run for each RSS feed (and there are about 100, but maybe 20-30 new entries per day combined on all of them). I'd love to be able to use this, but I can't think of an easy way other than to run this thing 100 times in a big loop to get all those RSS feeds (most of which will actually be empty).

I currently have all of these feeds in an OPML file at http://www.bendblogs.com/cache/opml.xml . Has anybody hacked this to work with a big text file full of URLs that it will pull from? typera, it looks like you have multiple categories on your site -- did you just run it a few times, different Mambo categories for each?

eugene33 · **Posted:** Tue Dec 27, 2005 7:20 am

Hi
I was playing with french RSS and as you probably know french love spec. characters so when importing I find myself with something like antique egyptian due to the UTF8. Does anybody found something to convert UTF8 to current joomla

Again I have to say that this script is REALLY Brilliant, I hacked it to display alias for the user, changed the email template....Oh by the way does anybody have an idea to insert address in CC

I really love it and look forward to see it as a component

jgobiz · **Posted:** Wed Dec 28, 2005 2:06 pm

eugene33 wrote:

Does anybody found something to convert UTF8 to current joomla

Hi eugene33,

First:
arround line 68 you may find 'where' and in the following line the code to search in the database for already existing articles. Change this one for your needs. If you try to convert e.g. from utf-8 to iso8859-1, use the following code

Code:

            WHERE
                title = '". (iconv('utf-8', 'iso-8859-1', str_stop(addslashes($item['title']),100))) ."'

Second:
arround line 84 you may find

Code:

      $titletext = str_stop(addslashes($item['title']),100);
      $introtext = str_stop(addslashes($item['description']), 500); //Shorten description to 280 chars...
      $maintext = addslashes($item['description']);

if you want to convert as mentioned above (from utf-8 to iso8859-1) change these three lines to

Code:

      $titletexti = str_stop(addslashes($item['title']),100);
      $titletext = (iconv('utf-8', 'iso-8859-1', $titletexti));
      $introtexti = str_stop(addslashes($item['description']), 500); //Shorten description to 280 chars...
      $introtext = (iconv('utf-8', 'iso-8859-1', $introtexti));
      $maintexti = addslashes($item['description']);
      $maintext = (iconv('utf-8', 'iso-8859-1', $maintexti));

First charset is 'from', second charset is 'to'. I guess, with the above informations, you should be able to do the changes, you may need for your imports.

Best regards,

Joern

eugene33 · **Posted:** Wed Dec 28, 2005 4:28 pm

thanks Jgobiz
Brilliant indeed

Sadly, full of hope I just tried it, and it doesn't work for me, looks like my provider didn't implemented the libiconv...
I'm with a PHP 4.4.1.

Best regards
Seb

Weird !!! I've got my hosting service and this "libivcon" is active by default !!! I checked 3 times the code, and it makes sense to me, but stil doesn't work.
I guess I will have to wait for Joomla 1.1 !!! $:-\$

scraane · **Joined:** Fri Dec 30, 2005 12:31 pm **Posts:** 13

I would really love a module for this. My provider does not support the PEAR stuff and is also not willing to support it.

So, if this can be made into a module that would be great!

Stephan

eugene33 · **Posted:** Fri Dec 30, 2005 5:36 pm

You should find what you need there http://my.joomla.free.fr/ they made a tuto and all the needed files to download.
I got the answers to run the script on the provider which doesn't want to run PEARL and XML, so now everything is running smoothly and perfectly
Good luck

scraane · **Joined:** Fri Dec 30, 2005 12:31 pm **Posts:** 13

This works great!!! Just one more small question... how do I "tag" the messages to be published on the frontpage?

eugene33 · **Posted:** Fri Dec 30, 2005 9:43 pm

Sorry I have no idea, as it call a second table jos_frontend.... my guess would be to use something like "editor choice" or e-writing" but I don't really know them so ....you are on your on

GuyOnTheAir · **Joined:** Wed Jan 04, 2006 4:43 am **Posts:** 11

I've attempted to install your excellent sounding script.

First off, I got a message that it couldn't find RSS.php. So, I installed it. Next, it couldn't find XML/Parser.php. So, I installed that. Next, it didn't like my database information. But, I finally figured out how to properly input that.

I'm a complete noob, and am not much of a coder, or anything, but now, when I browse to the script, I get a blank page in return.

Any ideas?

jgobiz · **Posted:** Wed Jan 04, 2006 11:51 am

Hi GuyOnTheAir,

GuyOnTheAir wrote:

I'm a complete noob, and am not much of a coder, or anything, but now, when I browse to the script, I get a blank page in return.
Any ideas?

First:
Have a look in your Joomla Backend. Are there any unpublished articles in the specified section and/or category?

Second:
Change the last to lines of the script from

Code:

}
?>

to

Code:

}
echo $email_body;
?>

Best regards,

Joern

lnxnubie · **Posted:** Thu Jan 05, 2006 5:44 am

Its a cool script i works fine for me.
thanks typera

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