Template::Plugin::XML::RSS - Plugin interface to XML::RSS


NAME

Template::Plugin::XML::RSS - Plugin interface to XML::RSS


SYNOPSIS

    [% USE news = XML.RSS($filename) %]

    [% FOREACH item = news.items %]
       [% item.title %]
       [% item.link  %]
    [% END %]


PRE-REQUISITES

This plugin requires that the XML::Parser and XML::RSS modules be installed. These are available from CPAN:

    http://www.cpan.org/modules/by-module/XML


DESCRIPTION

This Template Toolkit plugin provides a simple interface to the XML::RSS module.

    [% USE news = XML.RSS('mysite.rdf') %]

It creates an XML::RSS object, which is then used to parse the RSS file specified as a parameter in the USE directive. A reference to the XML::RSS object is then returned.

An RSS (Rich Site Summary) file is typically used to store short news 'headlines' describing different links within a site. This example is extracted from http://slashdot.org/slashdot.rdf.

    <?xml version="1.0"?><rdf:RDF
    xmlns:rdf="http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#";
    xmlns="http://my.netscape.com/rdf/simple/0.9/";>

      <channel>
        <title>Slashdot:News for Nerds. Stuff that Matters.</title>
        <link>http://slashdot.org<;/link>
        <description>News for Nerds.  Stuff that Matters</description>
      </channel>

      <image>
        <title>Slashdot</title>
        <url>http://slashdot.org/images/slashdotlg.gif<;/url>
        <link>http://slashdot.org<;/link>
      </image>

      <item>
        <title>DVD CCA Battle Continues Next Week</title>
        <link>http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/01/12/2051208<;/link>
      </item>

      <item>
        <title>Matrox to fund DRI Development</title>
        <link>http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/01/13/0718219<;/link>
      </item>

      <item>
        <title>Mike Shaver Leaving Netscape</title>
        <link>http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/01/13/0711258<;/link>
      </item>

    </rdf:RDF>

The attributes of the channel and image elements can be retrieved directly from the plugin object using the familiar dotted compound notation:

    [% news.channel.title  %]
    [% news.channel.link   %]
    [% news.channel.etc... %]
    [% news.image.title    %]
    [% news.image.url      %]
    [% news.image.link     %]
    [% news.image.etc...   %]

The list of news items can be retrieved using the 'items' method:

    [% FOREACH item = news.items %]
       [% item.title %]
       [% item.link  %]
    [% END %]


AUTHORS

This plugin was written by Andy Wardley <abw@wardley.org>, inspired by an article in Web Techniques by Randal Schwartz <merlyn@stonehenge.com>.

The XML::RSS module, which implements all of the functionality that this plugin delegates to, was written by Jonathan Eisenzopf <eisen@pobox.com>.


VERSION

2.59, distributed as part of the Template Toolkit version 2.10, released on 24 July 2003.


COPYRIGHT

  Copyright (C) 1996-2003 Andy Wardley.  All Rights Reserved.
  Copyright (C) 1998-2002 Canon Research Centre Europe Ltd.

This module is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as Perl itself.


SEE ALSO

Template::Plugin, XML::RSS, XML::Parser

 Template::Plugin::XML::RSS - Plugin interface to XML::RSS