Behind the Curtain Part III

Derek Jones

Posted: 24 April 2007 02:20 PM

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I promised more meat in the next installment of entries peeking behind the curtain of the ExpressionEngine.com redesign, and I shall deliver. Meatier, but still lean: this design decision was low fat. If you subscribe to our feeds, you’ll notice that the URLs all begin as http://expressionengine.com/feeds/atom/ and http://expressionengine.com/feeds/rss/. The reason quite simply is that we have only two templates for feeds, which saved us quite a bit of template creation and cut and pasting.

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Andru Edwards

Posted: 25 April 2007 11:19 AM

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I’ve gotta tell you, that is damn impressive. You don’t even know how bad I wish I understood it in practice enough to do on my own with our multiple feeds. I get the concept, and it’s stellar…damn me and my lack of PHP knowledge.

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Derek Jones

Posted: 25 April 2007 09:42 PM

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Just give a try, Dru. Cut and paste our template into a new RSS type template with PHP parsing set on Input, and get rid of all of the “case ‘segment’:” blocks except for one. Whatever you want to use as the third segment, put that in place of ‘segment’, and then change the other variables to match your custom fields, paths, statuses, etc. Then access that template with the third URL segment that you set the block up for. Then you can cut and paste the working “case block” within the switch { } control structure and begin adding the information for your other feeds.

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mhulse

Posted: 26 April 2007 02:15 AM

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This looks like another great blog post! Thanks Derek! I am totally looking forward to your next post. I really enjoy seeing how the pros do advanced things in EE.

Keep-up the great work!
Cheers,
Micky

Update: Oooh, this is great! I just setup my atom feed… works perfectly! Many many thanks! Moving-on to the RSS template. Derek, you rock!

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maleika

Posted: 26 April 2007 11:17 PM

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Holy schmolly! Thank you so much for this detailed walkthrough! :D

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e-man

Posted: 27 April 2007 07:35 AM

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Another great article,Derek. It’s indeed amazing what you can pull off by using even some basic php in your templates.

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Posted: 24 May 2007 06:48 PM

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First: Thanks for the BTC series so far, Derek ... very interesting indeed!

Am I correct in asuming that the


exp:weblog:entries site="expressionengine|ellislab"

parameter in your example isn’t available in EE 1.5.2?

Oh ... and I’d really love to see more BTC parts. Any chance for the mentioned next part in the near future?

-Markus

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Derek Jones

Posted: 24 May 2007 06:51 PM

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ms - 24 May 2007 06:48 PM
First: Thanks for the BTC series so far, Derek ... very interesting indeed!

Am I correct in asuming that the
exp:weblog:entries site="expressionengine|ellislab"
parameter in your example isn’t available in EE 1.5.2?

Oh ... and I’d really love to see more BTC parts. Any chance for the mentioned next part in the near future?

-Markus

Sharp eye, Markus, surprised no one remarked on that parameter yet. :-D

My attention has been pulled pretty tightly in the past couple weeks, which is why the next BTC hasn’t been published yet, but they have not been forgotten.

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rmeder

Posted: 22 October 2007 10:45 PM

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I have been attempting to implement your setup for hours to no avail :-(. I’m sure I’m missing something, and I hate to ask questions when I think I must be missing something simple. I just cant seem to get it. The feed processes, but it comes up with the title and no entries. Any assistance would be appreciated.

Thanks!

Here’s what I have:

<?php
global $IN;

$seg3 = (isset($IN->SEGS['3'])) ? $IN->SEGS['3'] : '';
$weblog         = '';
$entry_path     = '';
$category_path    = '';
$statuses        = '';
$fields            = '';
$use_entry_id    = FALSE;

if ($seg3 == '')
    $seg3 = 'full';
    
switch ($seg3)
{
    case 'guides':
        $weblog            = 'guide_blog';
        $entry_path        = 'articles/entry';
        $category_path    = 'guides';
        $fields            = '{summary}{body}';
        $statuses        = 'open';
        break;
      
}
?>

{exp:rss:feed weblog="<?=$weblog?>" status="<?php echo $statuses;?>"}

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="{encoding}"?>
<feed xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom" xml:lang="{weblog_language}">

    <title type="text">{exp:xml_encode}{weblog_name}{/exp:xml_encode}</title>
    <subtitle type="text">{exp:xml_encode}{weblog_name}:{weblog_description}{/exp:xml_encode}</subtitle>
    <link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="{weblog_url}" />
    <link rel="self" type="application/atom+xml" href="{path=xml/atom/{segment_3}}" />
    <updated>{gmt_edit_date format='%Y-%m-&#xdT;%H:%i:&#xsZ;'}</updated>
    <rights>Copyright (c) {gmt_date format="%Y"}, {author}</rights>
    <generator uri="http://expressionengine.com/" version="{version}">ExpressionEngine</generator>
    <id>tag:{trimmed_url},{gmt_date format="%Y:%m:%d"}</id>

{exp:weblog:entries weblog="<?=$weblog?>" limit="15" rdf="off" dynamic_start="on" disable="member_data|trackbacks" status="<?=$statuses?>"}
    <entry>
      <title>{exp:xml_encode}{title}{/exp:xml_encode}</title>
      <link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="<?php if ($use_entry_id === TRUE): ?>{entry_id_path='<?=$entry_path?>'}<?php else: ?>{url_title_path='<?=$entry_path?>'}<?php endif; ?>" />
      <id>tag:{trimmed_url},{gmt_entry_date format="%Y"}:{relative_url}/{weblog_id}.{entry_id}</id>
      <published>{gmt_entry_date format="%Y-%m-&#xdT;%H:%i:&#xsZ;"}</published>
      <updated>{gmt_edit_date format='%Y-%m-&#xdT;%H:%i:&#xsZ;'}</updated>
      <author>
            <name>{author}</name>
            {if url}<uri>{url}</uri>{/if}
      </author>
{categories}
      <category term="{exp:xml_encode}{category_name}{/exp:xml_encode}"
        scheme="{path='<?=$category_path?>'}"
        label="{exp:xml_encode}{category_name}{/exp:xml_encode}" />{/categories}
      <content type="html"><![CDATA[
        <?=$fields?>
      ]]></content>
    </entry>
{/exp:weblog:entries}

</feed>

{/exp:rss:feed} 

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rmeder

Posted: 22 October 2007 11:59 PM

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well… I figured it out. Maybe it is something that is documented, but I didn’t know any better. Your cases cannot match any existing template group names!

Just changed articles to articles_feed and amazing… it works!

Thanks for the Behind The Curtain posts Derek!! They are excellent.

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Derek Jones

Posted: 23 October 2007 07:06 AM

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Template groups will only be in the first, not the third segments, but I see that you have ‘guides’ there and not ‘articles’ nor ‘articles_feed’, so I’m confused. In any case, glad you got it working and found it useful!

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rmeder

Posted: 23 October 2007 09:09 AM

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Sorry. It was late. I actually have 9 different feeds, articles is another one of the feeds.

It is working great! Well the atom one is at least. Now I need to go figure out what I messed up in the rss template. The feeds that have custom fields and statuses in them are not working at all. I’m sure I just messed something up while trying to figure out why none of them work working.

Also I’m not so sure how I can create a “full” feed? my entry templates are different for each blog. Any ideas?

Thanks!

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Derek Jones

Posted: 23 October 2007 09:33 AM

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A “full” feed will only work if you have an acceptable way to list all of the entries together with a weblog entries tag. Whether or not that will work for your site you will have to make that determination.

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rmeder

Posted: 23 October 2007 12:17 PM

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How can I handle conditionals such as the following:

{if '{summary}' != ''}{summary}{if:else}{exp:word_limit total="100"}{body}{/exp:word_limit}{/if} 

as a value for $fields in the case select?

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Derek Jones

Posted: 23 October 2007 12:33 PM

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Just like you have it there, but double check the Troubleshooting Conditionals KB article. You shouldn’t be using a quoted and braced variable in your conditional.

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rmeder

Posted: 23 October 2007 01:12 PM

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Derek,
Thanks for the heads up on the quoted and braced. I have that issue throughout my site. Cleaning it up now.

With the RSS feed, I’m getting the following error when I run it:

XML Parsing Error: junk after document element
Line Number 2, Column 1:Parse error: parse error, unexpected T_CONSTANT_ENCAPSED_STRING in /www/eh6627/public_html/XXXXX/core/core.functions.php(635) : eval()‘d code on line 35

Here’s the case code:

case 'guides_feed':
        $weblog                = 'guide_blog';
        $entry_path            = 'guides/entry';
        $category_path        = 'guides/index';
        $fields                = '{if summary != ''}{summary}{if:else}{exp:word_limit total="100"}{body}{/exp:word_limit}{/if}';
        $statuses                = 'open';
        break; 

EDIT: the $fields line is line 35

I don’t want to keep bugging you, so whenever you get a chance, let me know.

I appreciate your help!!

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Derek Jones

Posted: 23 October 2007 01:23 PM

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$fields = '{if summary != ''}{summary}{if:else}{exp:word_limit total="100"}{body}{/exp:word_limit}{/if}'; 

You have single quotes within a single quoted string, so you either need to escape them, or what I prefer for code legibility is to consistently use the opposite quote within a quoted string. In other words, if you have a single quoted string, use double quotes for attributes inside. If you have a double quoted string, use single quotes inside.

$fields = '{if summary != ""}{summary}{if:else}{exp:word_limit total="100"}{body}{/exp:word_limit}{/if}'; 

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rmeder

Posted: 23 October 2007 02:29 PM

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ahh… something so simple . Thanks for the explaination!

Thanks for all of your assistance on this. I owe you a beer!

Best regards,

Rick

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Derek Jones

Posted: 23 October 2007 05:38 PM

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lol, thanks Rick!

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