As part of my playing around with the Zend Framework, I've decided to make this merged RSS feed using the Zend_Feed component. Actually at the end I've realized that this merged feed idea is quite useless, but at least this post came out of it :-)

He developed it originally as a way to combine his twitter and blog feeds into one thing to provide the latest updates to readers from both in one simple place. He shows how to take in the two feeds, each in its own feed object and merge them into one array. This array is then pushed back out to the visitor an the RSS format (thanks to Zend_Feed_Rss).

In this entry I explore Zend_Feed from the perspective of someone aggregating RSS and Atom feeds with a view to building a database of uniquely identified content for later presentation in a "Planet" style application. [...] In fact all we create here is a simple command line script to aggregate content frequently (e.g. just set up cron to run it every hour or so) into a database for later presentation.

He guides you through each step of the way:

• Setting Up Database And Models
• The Aggregator Script Foundation
• Using Zend_Feed to get common data for RSS/Atom entries
• Putting It All Together

There's plenty of code (and SQL to insert) in the post and he explains each point well, helping to make the development process smoother. There's even a summary section to toss in a few extra bits of information just in case you missed them along the way.

Consuming a feed with Zend Feed is quite simple if you don't want to do something fancy.

They include an example of how to pull in the feed, parse out information from the various tags, and push that information into a database they've created (they include the code for the script and to create the database as well).

This article explains basics of content syndications and demonstrates how to use Zend Framework Zend_Feed classes for consuming a news feed of your site.

His format of choice is Atom, slightly different from the RSS most sites use. He includes a sample document to show some of the differences (assuming you know the RSS format, of course) - both complex and simple versions. Also included is a UML layout of the Zend_Feed class, showing all of the methods and properties therein.

With the groundwork laid, he starts on the sample application - creating an Atom feed from a PHP array of data. He grabs the information from the database and pulls it into the controller where it's parsed and massaged into the array format the output needs. Then it's just a matter of passing it to the view and voila - an Atom feed worthy of consumption.

Lately I have begun to get more and more annoyed with my feed reader. I use a simple feed reader which lack most features except for subscribing to and reading feeds. The one thing that annoys me the most is that it can't aggregate several feeds into one feed. Yesterday I finally decided to scratch that itch.

His method uses the Zend Framework to accomplish the goal - and "the whole website logic (both model and controller) is about 200 lines of code". There's no exception or error handling in it, but it works and the Zend_Feed module works well to grab just about any kind of feed.