dnews

√app«dnews

Web Developer News

Using PHP and MagpieRSS to present Dynamic News Feeds

In my ongoing quest to demonstrate how the resources I review using the drx application are both pragmatic and worthwhile, I present RSS News feeds for Web developers from a number of different sources, and in several categories. I tweak this list often, so stay tuned. Suggestions are also welcome.

Although wrapping dnews as an application object took a little work, the engine behind actually fetching the news items is the MagpieRSS PHP feed parser (via Expat). Magpie supports RSS 0.9x, 1.0, 2.0 and most Atom format feeds. Installing and getting it working was incredibly easy. The Magpie library is very simple to use, but be warned of the old adage “garbage in = garbage out,” meaning pick your sources carefully and check them out by hand before plugging the results into your own pages. This is especially important if you are using XHTML like I am, or you can easily break your site.

On the bright side, since the results are cached, once an update is fetched (by anyone, not necessary you), the items are displayed very quickly. Not only does this improve the quality of the user’s experience, it is also good practice in order to avoid hammering your sources with requests.

On an even brighter note, I spent approximately one afternoon implementing this application. In addition to MagpieRSS, Feedview and the RSS Feed Validator were also very useful while developing dnews. Enjoy.

By popular demand, I have published a document which describes how this application was built. Visit the Howto MagpieRSS tutorial for more information.

RSS Channel Selector

Developer Buzz

1. Programming language warts: Newspeak

There&#8217;s a new language that is soon to be open sourced called Newspeak. Gilad Bracha and team are creating a new language to address what they see as the future of programming (online/offline operation, lots of service oriented design, more concurrency). They&#8217;re angling for a Smalltalk-like environment and, indeed, their current...
Published: Fri, 09 May 2008 20:19:32 GMT
URI:http://www.artima.com/forums/flat.jsp?forum=196&thread=230364
2. The Biofuel Economy

(Or, a Cobordism of Carbon.) Here&#8217;s my impression, with the dip greatly exaggerated. Oops! It takes a village (down) to raise an (American) child. Anyone want to make one of these with real numbers?
Published: Fri, 09 May 2008 20:19:32 GMT
URI:http://www.artima.com/forums/flat.jsp?forum=196&thread=230358
3. The Web Bores Me

I have to face the facts: I&#8217;m completely bored of writing web apps. I&#8217;m not bored by the architecture of the Web, which I believe should be leveraged more than it currently is; but sometimes I really don&#8217;t think I can face the grind and hassle of assembling what should be a simple web application [...]
Published: Fri, 09 May 2008 20:19:32 GMT
URI:http://www.artima.com/forums/flat.jsp?forum=196&thread=230356
4. Old News: NetBeans Tips

Have you ever wondered that there are no &#8220;tips of the day&#8221; for NetBeans available? Maybe these two sides could satisfy your needs: NetBeans Hacks (Part1) Here the following was new to me: Out-Smart Search &#38; Replace NetBeans Hacks (Part2) Here I suggest you to read Activate Anti-Aliasing Font Rendering in the Editor, Define...
Published: Fri, 09 May 2008 20:19:32 GMT
URI:http://www.artima.com/forums/flat.jsp?forum=196&thread=230354
5. Blog Update

While I haven't written in a while, I will be posting additional entries more frequently in the near future. There's been a number of posts that I started writing on various issues of the day over the past six months, but a confluence of different factors have caused me to postpone or not publish my entries. This post serves to reacclimate...
Published: Fri, 09 May 2008 20:19:32 GMT
URI:http://www.artima.com/forums/flat.jsp?forum=196&thread=230352
6. JavaOne 2008: Day Four

Parlez-vous Java? Java o hanashimasu ka?
Published: Fri, 09 May 2008 20:19:32 GMT
URI:http://www.artima.com/forums/flat.jsp?forum=196&thread=230350
7. Smalltalk Daily 5/9/08: Introduction to Namespaces

On today's Smalltalk Daily, we take a look at Namespaces. Technorati Tags: smalltalk, cincom smalltalk, namespaces
Published: Fri, 09 May 2008 20:19:32 GMT
URI:http://www.artima.com/forums/flat.jsp?forum=196&thread=230348
8. Friday Java Quiz: What&#039;s Your Favorite Java 7 Fea...

Like in past years, I&#039;m following JavaOne from afar. All I have access to are the general sessions and attendee&#039;s blog reactions to specific sessions on JavaLobby, java.net, JavaBlogs, and StuffThatHappens. And on Tuesday&#039;s session, I heard Danny Coward talking about new features for Java 7, which, BTW, is scheduled for Summer of...
Published: Fri, 09 May 2008 20:19:32 GMT
URI:http://www.artima.com/forums/flat.jsp?forum=196&thread=230346
9. Smalltalk Solutions Daily Update: Building a Seaside Appli...

Smalltalk Solutions 2008 is coming up fast - the schedule of events is here, and registration is here. There are a ton of great talks, like this tutorial from James Foster: This hands-on tutorial will present Seaside and walk through the process of building an application using GLASS (GemStone, Linux, Apache, Seaside, and Smalltalk). Topics...
Published: Fri, 09 May 2008 20:19:32 GMT
URI:http://www.artima.com/forums/flat.jsp?forum=196&thread=230344
10. Scala for NetBeans Screenshot#12: Better Completion with M...

Well, the type inference work is not so easy, but anyway, I've got a bit more progress, at least, the chained member call can now be correctly inferred in a lot of cases. It's some level as Tor's JavaScript for NetBeans now. First, let's create a val "node", which is a "scala.xml.Node" Then, input '.' to invoke completion, as I know which type...
Published: Fri, 09 May 2008 20:19:32 GMT
URI:http://www.artima.com/forums/flat.jsp?forum=196&thread=230342
11. Sun has posted the early draft review of JSR-317 Java Pers...

Sun has posted the early draft review of JSR-317 Java Persistence API. "This draft addresses improvements in the areas of domain modeling, O/R mapping, and EntityManager and Query runtime APIs. " Comments are due by June 1.
Published: Fri, 09 May 2008 20:19:32 GMT
URI:http://www.artima.com/forums/flat.jsp?forum=196&thread=230340
12. A PHP Guy’s Look At Python

Against all odds, I found myself with a little spare time this week. Rather than do something sensible like clean the garage or get some exercise, I took the opportunity to learn a new programming language: Python. Like may SitePoint readers, I cut my teeth on PHP. I’ve become very comfortable with it over the years, [...]
Published: Fri, 09 May 2008 20:19:32 GMT
URI:http://www.artima.com/forums/flat.jsp?forum=196&thread=230338
13. Method Challenge for the Week: paddedBinaryPrintString

Last night, I had a great time collaborating with Michael and Andres as we shared ideas back and forth on how to rewrite the following method: paddedBinaryPrintString "Answer the base two representation of the receiver, with the output being split into groups of 8 bits each" | binaryDigits paddedSize paddedString binaryStream | binaryDigits :=...
Published: Fri, 09 May 2008 20:19:32 GMT
URI:http://www.artima.com/forums/flat.jsp?forum=196&thread=230336
14. attributes with default values (on steroids)

While ruby has attr_accessor there's no good way to specify a default value which comes as part of the stock language. Thank goodness for metaprogramming. Based off of Create getter and setter on a valorized variable, I have a solution which takes either a value or a block as the default. It's based, in part, upon my solution for Ruby Quiz #67...
Published: Fri, 09 May 2008 20:19:32 GMT
URI:http://www.artima.com/forums/flat.jsp?forum=196&thread=230334
15. Scott Bale: What&#039;s So Great About Guice

Scott Bale&#039;s presentation about Guice at the St. Louis JUG tonight is well attended and lively. You can tell Scott liked Guice. He enumerated all the things about Guice that he liked at the beginning of the talk: small, simple powerful, type safe, no xml, easy to use, etc. It&#039;s been my experience that people either really like Guice,...
Published: Fri, 09 May 2008 20:19:32 GMT
URI:http://www.artima.com/forums/flat.jsp?forum=196&thread=230332