Plugin: FeedGrab

Version 7 of feedgrab introduced an updated version of the RSS/ATOM reading libray magpie. This allowed the plugin to do have some new, useful (to me anyway) features, like being able to access attributes of elements (eg, <element url=”http://url.com/” >). It does seem as though the new magpie code does not handle character encodings as successfully as the previous version. I’ve been getting the ‘?’ characters replacing some characters too, typically quotes and dashes. If you don’t need the new features, I’d suggest going back to v0.61 for now, until I can fix it.

Hi Andrew:

First of all, after reviewing the tone of my last message, I wanted to let you know that I sincerely appreciate the work you are putting into this plugin. It’s perfect for my application.

Unfortunatly, I can’t go back to .61. When running .61, old infomation that appears to be cached is grabbed by feedgrab.

.61:

Fetching: http://ws.audioscrobbler.com/1.0/user/DigiFiend/recenttracks.rss
Checking: Mickey Avalon – Roll Up Your Sleeves
Checking: Mickey Avalon – Hustler Hall of Fame
Checking: Mickey Avalon – Mr. Right
Checking: Mickey Avalon – Roll The Dice
Checking: Mickey Avalon – Jane Fonda
Checking: Mickey Avalon – So Rich, So Pretty
Checking: Talking Heads – Slippery People
Checking: Oasis – Live Forever
Checking: The Smiths – What She Said
Checking: The Rolling Stones – Have You Seen Your Mother?

.7:

Fetching: http://ws.audioscrobbler.com/1.0/user/DigiFiend/recenttracks.rss
Checking: AC/DC ? Ride On
Checking: AC/DC ? Ain't No Fun (Waiting Round to Be a Millionaire)
Checking: AC/DC ? There's Gonna Be Some Rockin'
Checking: AC/DC ? Problem Child
Checking: AC/DC ? Rocker
Checking: AC/DC ? Big Balls
Checking: AC/DC ? Love at First Feel
Checking: AC/DC ? Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap
Checking: Stereo MC's ? Breeze
Checking: Stereo MC's ? We Belong in This World Together

Same feed, and the .7 grab is correct.

Ideas?

After talking with Paul and doing some diagnosis, it appears that .61 of feedgrab is not caching entries correctly. I’m at a loss to explain why, the perms on both the magpie cache directory and file are 777. Does anybody know what server side change could cause such a behavior? It’s the only thing I can think of.

Thanks again for the help!

Am I missing something? I installed FeedGrab and set up a weblog and a template. I can bring in feeds with no problem and they are imported into the database. But when I try to click on a title under the Edit tab, I get an error message that I have tried to access a weblog that does not exist. Yet, when I go under the Publish tab and choose my feeds weblog, I can publish to it and also edit the entry. I just cannot get into the entries generated by FeedGrab. Is that how it is supposed to work?

Anyone have any ideas?

First of all, after reviewing the tone of my last message, I wanted to let you know that I sincerely appreciate the work you are putting into this plugin. It’s perfect for my application. Unfortunatly, I can’t go back to .61.

Don’t worry - no offence taken 😊

Can I send you a new version of the plugin ‘off-forum’? I’ve made some changes that I think help, but I’m not sure whether they fix all of the problems, and I could use somebody to help test it.

I’m not sure why the old version is caching the data, though…

Am I missing something? I installed FeedGrab and set up a weblog and a template. I can bring in feeds with no problem and they are imported into the database. But when I try to click on a title under the Edit tab, I get an error message that I have tried to access a weblog that does not exist. Yet, when I go under the Publish tab and choose my feeds weblog, I can publish to it and also edit the entry. I just cannot get into the entries generated by FeedGrab. Is that how it is supposed to work?

The short answer is ‘no’, that isn’t how it is supposed to work.

The most likely problem is that the values are using for the weblog or author parameter are wrong, and the plugin is not warning you. Then when you are trying to view your entries, the Control Panel is not happy trying to find the entry’s weblog or author details.

Both parameters should take an integer value corresponding to the weblog’s or author’s id.

Feel free to send me your code your use to call the plugin and I’ll take a look at it (Email or PM is fine).

I fixed the problem above. I had mistyped a name of a field and FeedGrab must have choked on it.

Sorry - I know I need to tighten up the error checking

hi.

I think that the plugin is great Andrew, thanks. and it is working ok, except that I am getting the following error

Notice: Undefined index: date in ~/pi.feedgrab.php on line 221 Notice: Undefined index: date in ~/pi.feedgrab.php on line 222 Notice: Undefined index: date in ~/pi.feedgrab.php on line 223 Notice: Undefined index: date in ~/pi.feedgrab.php on line 224

I am guessing that “pubDate” is the wrong name, but I don’t know what I should be using… I tried just ‘date’ and that didn’t work either. It’s a feedburner feed and also does not work with a blogger feed. Please let me know if it’s possible or if you have any ideas. thanks!

Another common name for the date field is “dc:date”.

If you can post some example url’s for the feeds I’ll take a look (or email me if you don’t want to make them public).

thanks so much Andrew, I sent you an email from here.

First of all, after reviewing the tone of my last message, I wanted to let you know that I sincerely appreciate the work you are putting into this plugin. It’s perfect for my application. Unfortunatly, I can’t go back to .61.

Don’t worry - no offence taken 😊 Can I send you a new version of the plugin ‘off-forum’? I’ve made some changes that I think help, but I’m not sure whether they fix all of the problems, and I could use somebody to help test it. I’m not sure why the old version is caching the data, though…

You bet, I just sent you my e-mail addy via a forum PM, let me know if you didn’t get it.

Thanks a bunch!

I am running into a seriously weird problem with this plugin! It was working until now, but I just upgraded to 0.7 and it stopped working. Just gives me a blank page, entirely blank with no output whatsoever, so it’s hard to debug. Page displays fine without the plugin, but goes blank as soon as I put the code in, no matter what changes I made to it.

URL which, as you can see, is entirely blank instead of outputting feedgrab feedback: http://stillburning.com/index.php/photos/flickr/

This is all I have in the ‘flickr’ template:

{exp:feedgrab url="http://api.flickr.com/services/feeds/photos_public.gne?id=95239135@N00&tags=stillburningcom&format=rss_200" 
unique="title" 
weblog="2" 
title="title" 
date="dc:date.Taken" 
use="link|img|description|media:category" 
fields="link|media:content@url|description|tags"}

Does anyone have any ideas what might cause this or how I might troubleshoot this better? My server’s using PHP5, in case that might make a difference.

Sorry for the slow response.

Try checking the parameters - the error checking in the plugin needs improving and it will often bail out with no output if there is a problem.

Should media:content@url be in the fields parameter?

Andrew–

Am loving your FeedGrab plugin. It offers something I have been wanting in EE for a long time, the opportunity to shove a large number of records into the database all at once. I am having some troubles getting it to work properly.

First, like others, I found v.7 broke the CP w/ Magpie 1.3.2 also installed. This is definitively the problem because if I remove Magpie, no problem w/ CP; if I remove v.7, no problem. I have gone back to v.6.2 for the time being.

Second and more vexing, I get this error when I run the ‘go’ template:

Warning: MagpieRSS: Failed to parse RSS file. (SYSTEM or PUBLIC, the URI is missing at line 1, column 53) in /home/public_html/system/plugins/pi.feedgrab.php on line 1299

Notice: Trying to get property of non-object in /home/public_html/system/plugins/pi.feedgrab.php on line 121

Part of the trouble might be that I am accessing a non-standard xml schema. I am exporting a file out of Adobe InDesign as xml, then throwing that into a directory and directing FeedGrab there. My hope is to have FeedGrab shove each item as a distinct record into the db. This xml file reads okay through Mozilla, so it is parsing properly, but the tagging is non-standard. I can tinker with the export if this is the problem.

My xml prologue as it exports looks like this:

<?xml version=”1.0” encoding=”UTF-8” standalone=”yes”?>

Do I need to declare something else in my prologue? If so, what?

Must “title” must == “title,” in other words the tag in the xml document must be “title.”

Finally, I am also trying to get my head around your new category feature. Are you saying that I just point that to a field in my xml and FeedGrab will auto build that as a category in my EE weblog? Very slick, if so,

Anyway, if you can help me through my error message, I can play some more.