[SOLVED] Intergrating news scroller from net.tutsplus.com

73 Posts

larsb Reply #1, 17 years, 5 months ago

Hi all,

http://net.tutsplus.com/videos/screencasts/how-to-build-a-super-duper-news-scroller/

I am trying to integrate this with my Modx site, but I am having some issues. Mainly because I suck badly at PHP.

What I have done so far.

Created my own Ditto feed (http://ditto.modxcms.com/tutorials/custom-rss-feed.html)
-That was easy enough

Created a snippet with the following code to get SimplePie going

<?php
require 'simplepie.inc';
$feed = new SimplePie('http://net.tutsplus.com/rss');
$feed->handle_content_type();
?>

That was also pretty straight forward.

Now I need to somehow get the html+php code for showing the actual news items into my template. The code looks something like this taken straight from the tutorial:

		<ul id="widget">
			<?php foreach($feed->get_items(0, 15) as $item) : ?>
			<li>
				<?php echo $item->get_description(); ?>
				<h4><a href="<?php echo $item->get_permalink(); ?>"><?php echo $item->get_title(); ?></a></h4>
				<p>
					<?php echo $item->get_date(); ?>
				</p>
			</li>
			<?php endforeach; ?>
		</ul>

The problem is here, that no matter how I try to include it, as a chunk or a snippet or directly into my template, it screws up badly, resulting in a blank page.

So, my question is now, how can I include this without having to re-write it too much? (Since re-writing is hard when you are a php newb)

Oh I also tried requiring it as a php file. That didnt work as well.

Thanks to all that are still reading

-larsb

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956 Posts

ganeshXL Reply #2, 17 years, 4 months ago

This piece of code has HTML + PHP mixed together. Try adding opening and closing PHP tags around it and save it as a snippet. (or rewrite every HTML bit inside PHP, i.e. echo, and use just one PHP open- and close tag)
Actually, I think you can just put it beneath the require(SP) block...

http://www.fantastique.ch/
http://www.dnik.ch/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/dnik/

73 Posts

larsb Reply #3, 17 years, 4 months ago

Hi Ganesh,

Thanks for a fast reply.

Just wrapping it in php tags and running it as a snippet, kind of worked. I didn’t get any errors, but then again, not content shows up.

I have tried re-writing it as a php block, but there must be some errors in my code, because I get a blank page when running it. TextMate however, tells me that there are no syntax errors.

<?php
echo "<ul id=\"widget\">";
foreach($feed->get_items(0, 15) as $item) :
echo "<li>";
echo $item->get_description();
echo "<h4><a href=\"$item->get_permalink();\">$item->get_title();</a></h4>";
echo "<p>";
echo $item->get_date();
echo "</p>";
echo "</li>";
endforeach;
echo "</ul>";
?>

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956 Posts

ganeshXL Reply #4, 17 years, 4 months ago

try this...

<?php

require 'simplepie.inc';
$feed = new SimplePie('http://net.tutsplus.com/rss');
$feed->handle_content_type();

$o = '';
$o .= '<ul id="widget">';

foreach($feed->get_items(0, 15) as $item) {
	$o .= '<li>';
	$o .= $item->get_description();
	$o .= '<h4>';
	$o .= '<a href="';
	$o .= $item->get_permalink();
	$o .='">';
	$o .=$item->get_title();
	$o .='</a></h4>';
	$o .= '<p>';
	$o .= $item->get_date();
	$o .= '</p></li>';
}

$o .='</ul>';

return($o);

?>

but first of all: make sure the path to simplepie.inc is correct

http://www.fantastique.ch/
http://www.dnik.ch/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/dnik/

73 Posts

larsb Reply #5, 17 years, 4 months ago

Ganesh you are a God, hence your name

Thanks alot, it works like a charm now..

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