Modification: RSS Feeds by Category (or anything else)

[jonahcoyote]

Hey everybody, I've been searching around for a way to have an RSS feed link on a category listing and have the feed be specific to that category. I couldn't find anything like it in the forums, so I just set it up myself.

STEP 1: Get the category ID. Open up category.php and around line 37 add this:

$class_tpl->assign('catID', $cat['id']);

This will get the category ID and assign it to a catID variable for the template.

STEP 2: Add to your template. I added the RSS link and icon to the breadcrumb area so it's right out in the open. To do this, open your_template>categories>breadcrumb.tpl and add the following code:

{if $file == "category.php"}
<h3><a href="{$smarty.const.URL}/external.php?category={$catID}">RSS Feed</a> <a href="{$smarty.const.URL}/external.php?category={$catID}"><img src="templates/{$smarty.const.MAIN_TEMPLATE}/images/rss.gif" alt="RSS Feed" /></a></h3>
{/if}

I first check to make sure I am on the category.php file and not any other file. If I am, then display my RSS link and icon. As referenced in the 68 Classifieds documentation on RSS Feeds - there are lots of parameters you can use for the feed which is really nice. I just want to use category as a parameter, so I use:

{$smarty.const.URL}/external.php?category={$catID}

{$smarty.const.URL} is my sites URL. external.php is the file which gets the feeds and all I do is pass category as a parameter and use {$catID} as my dynamic category ID.

I hope this helps.

Cheers,
Jonah

[seymourjames]

You can if you want SEO friendly URLs for the feeds do this as well. An RSS feed for each category and for each advertiser. For example, in the .htaccess

RewriteRule ^external\.html$ external.php [NC]

RewriteRule ^external/([0-9]+)\.html$ external.php?owner=$1 [NC]

RewriteRule ^external/aquitaine\.html$ external.php?category=1 [NC]
RewriteRule ^external/limousin\.html$ external.php?category=11 [NC]
.
.
.

SEO file

"'(?<!/)".URL."/external.php'",
"'(?<!/)external.php'",

.
.
.

"external.html",
"external.html",

[Lhotch]

external.php also has built in logic to return "types" so you can just display top, featured and new ads in the feed. by appending type=top, type=featured or type=new to the url.

[jonahcoyote]

Thanks Seymour and Larry,

I did the .htaccess and SEO mod and it works great!

[michael]

I've successfully integrated jonahcoyote's code, it looks good and works well - thank you.

A request though. In addition to category.php, I'd like the RSS Feed to also appear in the breadcrumb trail displayed on viewlisting .php which calls on the same file; mytemplate/categories/breadcrumb.tpl

The file is short enough to post in it's entirety;

{*$Revision: 165 $*}
<p class="breadcrumb">
    <a href="category.php" class="breadcrumb">{$smarty.const.LANG_BROWSE_CATEGORIES}</a>
    {foreach from=$breadcrumb item="entry"}
        {$smarty.const.LANG_CAT_SEPERATOR} {$entry}
    {/foreach}
{if $file == "category.php"}
 . . . . <a href="{$smarty.const.URL}/external.php?category={$catID}">RSS Feed</a> <a href="{$smarty.const.URL}/external.php?category={$catID}"><img src="templates/{$smarty.const.MAIN_TEMPLATE}/images/rss.gif" alt="RSS Feed" /></a>
{/if}
</p>

I've had a fiddle but I just don't know the correct way of getting viewlisting.php to act on this code. I even tried simply replacing category.php with viewlisting.php in the {if $file == } statement but nothing happened.

Any ideas?

[michael]

Just bumping this 'cos I see Eric is online . . .

[Lhotch]

Originally Posted by michael

I've had a fiddle but I just don't know the correct way of getting viewlisting.php to act on this code. I even tried simply replacing category.php with viewlisting.php in the {if $file == } statement but nothing happened.

Any ideas?

What do you get if you put {$file} in your template?

did you clear the contents of /templates_c?

[Eric Barnes]

I have done it for this site:
CGIExpo

What I did was alter the breadcrumb.tpl and add in the with out any if statements. Then in viewlisting.tpl I just manually inserted the breadcrumb instead of including it.

<p class="breadcrumb">
        <a href="category.php" class="breadcrumb">{$smarty.const.LANG_BROWSE_CATEGORIES}</a>
        {foreach from=$breadcrumb item="entry"}
            {$smarty.const.LANG_CAT_SEPERATOR} {$entry}
        {/foreach}
</p>

[michael]

Hi Eric. I've stripped out the if/else commands and all still works well on category.php - so far, so good. I inserted the code you posted into viewlisting.tpl (in place of the include) and the breadcrumb showed up fine but no RSS link or image. Did you mean to post the revised breadcrumb.tpl?

So I tried that. The breadcrumb is still ok and I also get the RSS link and image (getting close now), but the link/image do not have the category ID attached.

See MKClassifieds Citroen 2cv6 PickUp

Any suggestions?

Larry,you said "What do you get if you put {$file} in your template?" Could you explain that a bit please? Should I put {$file} into viewlisting.tpl?

[Eric Barnes]

For the rss link change it to:
<a href="external.php?cat={$smarty.get.cat}">RSS FEED</a>