New on NETTUTS.com today there's a tutorial about building a simple RSS feed for your CodeIgniter application based on the contents of a MySQL database and a standard MVC setup of files to handle the request.

In this tutorial, we will build a RSS 2.0 Feed with the PHP framework CodeIgniter. After this tutorial, you will be able to build a feed for any custom website in no time at all.

The process (like the CodeIgniter framework) is a pretty simple one. He helps you set up the MySQL database and tables via phpMyAdmin and creates a simple model, view and controller to handle a "yourdomain.com/feed" request with an RSS document. All sample code is included, ready for you to cut and paste.

New on the TotalPHP blog today is this article talking about reading RSS feeds with PHP (more specifically with SimpleXML).

PHP 5's ability to read XML files is fantastically easy to use. In the past it was possible but it required quite a bit of long winded code to get any where. PHP 5's SimpleXmlElement function makes working with XML a breeze, and with much less code too!

They include a script as an example - five lines to completely parse and pull the title and link information out of the remote RSS file. The example creates a SimpleXML object using the feed's URL and makes each element inside accessible as an object (that can be looped through and properties can be checked on).

New from NETTUTS.com today is a tutorial on creating a new scroller, a ticker of the latest information from your choice of news feeds. They use the SimplePie parser (PHP-based) to do most of the work.

This week, we'll learn how to combine PHP, SimplePie, and jQuery to build a simple news scroller widget for your website. It's much easier than you might think; so let's begin.

Their application (source is here) combines PHP - well, SimplePie - and a custom jQuery extension. The screencast walks you through each step the code takes and, and the end, you'll have a simple news block that can show as many of the latest news items ad you'd like.

In this new tutorial from NETTUTS.com there's information on how to create a gallery of the images from your Flickr account with help from SimplePie, a PHP tool for parsing XML feeds (like RSS).

Ok, so we're going to be touching on a number of technologies for this tutorial. We'll be using an RSS feed from Flickr, a bit of PHP, and some jQuery to make things nice and interactive! We'll use SimplePie to handle the RSS feed, as it makes life much easier, and can be used in any other projects where RSS feeds are involved.

They pull in the public photo information for a given user ID and parse details like the title of the gallery and each image's details, including descriptions. Add in a few links, some Javascript (jQuery) and HTML and you have a simple image gallery that automatically updates when you upload new photos to Flickr. You can grab the source here or just see it in action in their demo.

The PHPBuilder.com has posted today looking to introduce you to a powerful XML creation tool in PHP5 installations - XMLWriter.

They jump right in and show it in action by creating a simple RSS document with one element inside. A call to the flush() method on your XMLWriter object is all it takes to output the XML.

They also change things up and bit and swap out the procedural code for a more object-oriented approach with a constructor that sets up the object and adds in some of the common RSS information. Their addItem() method is called to add in a sample item (in this case, an entry for a CD player product) and _endRSS() closes things off and runs that flush() to send it all back out.

You can find out more about XMLWriter (and its sister, XMLReader) in the PHP manual.

In this new blog entry Marc Gear suggests a few things that you can do to help learn a new framework quickly and easily:

There are dozens of PHP frameworks around now, some attracting more attention than others. I am no expert on these frameworks and have not used a single one extensively so I wouldn't dream of recommending one over the other, nor do I want to enter the debate about what is or is not a framework (I'll work on the assumption that anything calling itself a framework is a framework). Instead I'm going to concentrate on how you can get started with a new framework as quickly as possible.

He suggests four examples that can help you get more familiar with each framework and how they're structured - a "hello world" as a first step, creating a simple calculator, making a guestbook and making a simple script to parse and paginate a remote RSS feed.

Smashing Magazine has a few helpful RSS tips and tricks for WordPress users out there:

Let's take a look at 10 useful, yet rather unknown RSS-tricks for WordPress. Each section of the article presents a problem, suggests a solution and provides you with an explanation of the solution, so that you can not just solve some of your RSS-related problems but also understand what you are actually doing.

Here's their list:

• Control When Your Posts are Available via RSS
• Redirecting WordPress Feeds to FeedBurner Feeds
• Insert Ads (or Anything Else) in Your RSS Feed
• Format Your Images for Feed Readers
• Provide Your Readers with a Feed for Each Post
• Exclude Categories from Your RSS Feed
• Display Any RSS Feed on Your WordPress Blog
• Use Category-Specific RSS Feeds
• List RSS Feeds by Category
• Get Rid of RSS Feeds the Clean Way

The NETTUTS.com site has a new article pointing out a screecast talking about pulling in and parsing the contents of an RSS feed.

Dynamically pulling in an RSS feed was beyond the scope [of this article]. In today's video tutorial, I'll show you exactly how to do this using PHP. At roughly forty-five minutes in length, you might want to take a quick "pre-screencast bathroom break". You also might want to grab some raisins.

Due to some video issues, the screencast is current posted here (but will be in the post in the future). As always, the source code can be downloaded and a live demo is available to sample the end result.

On the CSS Tricks blog there's a recent article showing how to combine the jQuery Javascript library and the SimplePie PHP feed aggregator to create a iPhone/mobile interface to any RSS feed.

We are going to create a web page that is formatted specifically for the iPhone (but would presumably be good for other mobile devices as well). This web page will dynamically fill itself with content from any RSS feed that you give it. The interface is going to be built to be easy to use on a mobile device, with large "touchable" areas and nice (jQuery) animations that whisk you between articles.

They work through the process - five simple steps:

• Create the iPhone Environment
• Pull in the RSS Feed
• Creating the Front Page: Headlines Only
• Creating the Article Pages: jQuery Slider Style
• Adding Some Flair

All code and images needed are included (as well as a demo if you'd like to try it out).

Just for you Lively early adopters out there, there's a script that's been posted to the International Stock Exchange forum showing how to get a feed into the virtual world.

Here is a free PHP script to convert the titles of a news feed to a PNG graphic for display in Google Lively. To display a news feed in Google Lively, go to the "Add object" button, search for "Picture Frame". Click on add to room and then edit properties. In Gadget Options place the url of the PHP script in the option box.

The script can then be hosted on a web server where it can pull down the latest stories and update the PNG image accordingly.