Related posts from the blogosphere - dynamic integration of Google Blogsearch RSS on wordpress category pages

Question

OK, I'm looking for a method to put the three latest "news" from Google Blogsearch/Twitter search feeds into the bottom of category Pages. Maybe like this (assuming we're on the archive page for the "Sports" category):

What others say about "Sport":

1. Instapundit - Michael Jordan Comeback!
2. Huffington post - Michael Jordan Comeback!
3. Crazyguy - Michael Jordan Comeback!

So we all know that you can put

<?php include_once(ABSPATH.WPINC.'/rss.php'); wp_rss('pathtofeed.com', 3); ?>

in a template-file and it will list the latest three items of a feed.

I would like to put the path to the feed of a query to Google Blogsearch, e.g. [http://blogsearch.google.com/blogsearch_feeds?hl=en&q=sport&ie=utf-8&num=10&output=rss][1]

Works fine. But I would like to replace the "sport"-query with the template tag for the category title - so it dynamically queries Google for a RSS-feed of "sport"-searches. I've tried this:

<?php include_once(ABSPATH.WPINC.'/rss.php');wp_rss('www.blogsearch.google.com/blogsearch_feeds?hl=en&q=<?php single_cat_title() ?>&ie=utf-8&num=10&output=rss', 3); ?>

(omitted 'http' cause I can't post hyperlinks here as a new user).

But all I get is: "There was a problem with the feed, try again later." (translated from Danish error message).

Is it the syntax?

Answer 1

You've got a couple of issues in that code. The first is you have a <?php inside an already opened <?php section. Concatenation is the answer to that problem.

The second is the function single_cat_title() displays the category title by default. Meaning it "echo()"s it out. So you need to tell that function to return the value not display it.

My solution would be to add a line of code above your include there to get the category you're looking for along the lines of:

$current_category = single_cat_title("", false);

The "false" tells the function to return it as a value instead of displaying it by default, the first parameter is the prefix or the text to display before the category title.

Then concatenate the current_category variable into your include statement

You can check out that function on the Template Tags page in the Wordpress Codex.

Answer 2

Hey thanks, will take a look at it. Makes completely sense :-)