PHP Creating an atom feed

Question

How do I go about creating an atom feed in PHP?

Answer 1

Use a library.

Answer 2

Wikipedia has an example of what an ATOM feed looks like. Feel free to modify this very basic RSS class that I wrote a long while ago to create a very simple RSS feed:

class RSSFeed
{  
 var $feedHeader;
 var $feedItems;

 /* Class Constructor */
 function RSSFeed()
 {
  //do some contruction
  $this->feedHeader = '';
  $this->feedItems = '';
 }

 function setFeedHeader($title, $link, $description, $copyright, $lastBuildDate, $ttl)
 {
  $this->feedHeader = '<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?><rss version="2.0"><channel>';
  $this->feedHeader .= '<title>'.$title.'</title>';
  $this->feedHeader .= '<link>'.$link.'</link>';
  $this->feedHeader .= '<description>'.$description.'</description><copyright>'.$copyright.'</copyright>';
  $this->feedHeader .= '<language>en-GB</language><lastBuildDate>'.$lastBuildDate.' GMT</lastBuildDate><ttl>'.$ttl.'</ttl>';
 }

 function pushItem($title, $link, $description, $pubDateTime)
 {
  $item = '<item><title>' . htmlentities(stripslashes($title)) . '</title>';
  $item .= '<link>' . $link . '</link>';
  $item .= '<guid>' . $link . '</guid>';
  $item .= '<description>' . htmlentities(stripslashes($description)) . '</description>';

  $item .= '<pubDate>' . $pubDateTime . ' GMT</pubDate></item>';

  $this->feedItems = $item . $this->feedItems;
 }

 function writeOutFeed($path)
 {
  $file = fopen($path, "w");
  fputs($file, $this->feedHeader);
  fputs($file, $this->feedItems);
  fputs($file, '</channel></rss>');
  fclose($file);
 }
}

Answer 3

An update for anyone that may stumble upon this thread:

A very similar question was asked in http://stackoverflow.com/questions/182510/what-is-the-best-php-lib-class-to-generate-rss-atom and it lead to a number of good lib/roll your own recommendations.