Feed generator for PHP, allowing åäö and images

Question

Hi, I'm new to feeds.

I want to create feeds, so first, should I use rss 1, 2 or atom, whatever is best/standard?

Second, do you know any easy to understand tutorials or code-examples?

Any other good to know for feeds is more than welcome.

I'm using php and mysql.

Thanks in advance. /Johan

Answer 1

Should I use rss 1, 2 or atom, whatever is best/standard?

RSS 2 is a good choice, but Atom is good too.

Do you know any easy to understand tutorials or code-examples?

Take a look at W3 - RSS Tutorial and at PHP Tutorials

Answer 2

If you are looking to programatically READ RSS feeds into your PHP applications, I recommend using Magpie, which is an open-source library built just for that purpose. (do a search, I am too new to be able to post more than one hyperlink :P )

Creating a feed is as simple as generating XML out of a PHP app, it just has to follow rules as defined in the W3-RSS tutorial mentioned earlier. There are a few packages out there that can be used to CREATE feeds programatically too (like http://sourceforge.net/projects/feedcreator/).

Answer 3

Writing your own code to generate the feed will probably be your best bet. It's dead simple and probably cleaner than using another library in your app. If you're wanting to read feeds, another great option I recently used is the Zend framework Zend_Feed_Reader component.