How to read external rss file ?

Question

Hi, I should to display datas from a rss file from another server.

When the rss file is on my server, I can read it, but when I try to read the same file on another server, I obtain this :

Warning: simplexml_load_file(rssfile) [function.simplexml-load-file]: failed to open stream: Connection timed out in index.php on line 43

Warning: simplexml_load_file() [function.simplexml-load-file]: I/O warning : failed to load external entity "rssfile" in index.php on line 43

This is my code :

$actus = simplexml_load_file('rssfile');  
foreach ($actus->channel->item as $actu) 
{  

echo $actu->title;

} 

How to fix it ?

I think the problem comes from Symfony

Answer 1

You can then read it with something like this ...

private static string LoadResource(string rname)
{
    System.IO.Stream s = null;

    try
    {
        s = System.Reflection.Assembly.GetExecutingAssembly().GetManifestResourceStream(rname);
        return new System.IO.StreamReader(s).ReadToEnd();
    }

    finally
    {
        if (s != null)
        {
            s.Dispose();
        }
    }
}

Answer 2

Since the error/warning message is "Connection timed out" let's take a closer look at the timeout options.
There's default_socket_timeout and the http context option timeout which might have been set via stream_context_set_default.

Try this

$xmlsrc = 'http://some.host/a/path/foo.rss';
$actus = simplexml_load_file($xmlsrc);
if ( !$actus ) {
  echo "simplexml_load_file() failed.<br />\n";
  echo '$xmlsrc='; var_dump($xmlsrc); echo "<br />\n";
  echo 'default_socket_timeout=', ini_get('default_socket_timeout'), "<br />\n";
  $defaultOptions = stream_context_get_options(stream_context_get_default());
  echo 'default options='; var_dump($defaultOptions); echo "<br />\n";
  die;
}

foreach ($actus->channel->item as $actu) ...

in both scenarios (with/without symfony) on the same server. Do the (timeout) values differ?

Answer 3

Hi, I agree with VolkerK, the error comes from a bad url provided.

In addition, as you are using symfony, I strongly advise you to go for sfFeed2Plugin that will do a lot more than the simplexml loader (validation, output methods, and even, if needed, serving).

Here's a quick usage example:

// define your source url
$source_url = 'http://feeds.feedburner.com/TechCrunch';

// fetch url
if($feed = sfFeedPeer::createFromWeb($source_url))
{
  // get items
  $items = $feed->getItems();

  foreach($items as $item)
  {
    // do whatever you want with each item
    echo $item->getTitle()."\n";
  }
}

All the best, DaToine