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Hi all,

This question may be a bit confusing, and it might be hard to answer, but I figured I would ask it here since the community would know EE-specific answers.

I was thinking of building a site that would basically pull image posts from several RSS feeds and combine them into one “master” list. I would like to use ExpressionEngine to submit content that wasn’t pulled from the feeds alongside the feed content.

I would like to automatically post new images as they appear in the RSS feeds, and also have the option to publish new pictures from EE itself. If possible, I would like for EE to “import” the RSS feed items, simply for archiving purposes, but I have the feeling that might be quite complicated.

Essentially I’m just probing to see if anyone has done projects like this with external RSS feeds and EE, or if they have any suggestions for how to “import” RSS feed items into EE in general.

Thanks.

first i think your going to hit copyright issues - especially where images are concerned.
That aside, RSS is what it is - really simple syndication, i am not sure your going to get anything other than a thumbnail and basic text and links - not sure what you would achieve by this - but that is not for me to decide!!!

In short, i would advise an addon be created for this need. If you are able this will be a lot quicker and cleaner. You’ll need a trigger like a CRON (or if your getting enough hits this could be triggered on page view - not nice though!), then parse it and save it, output via EE the normal way.

Hey nevsie, thanks for your reply.

I wouldn’t take RSS content from another site. It would be pulling content from sites I run/manage, populated by people who are volunteering for me. Essentially I would like them to be able to manage their content “normally” through the CMS, and then have one site that aggregates all the content into one database and website. Would this be something for multiple site manager?

I’m going to look into having an add-on created, that’s an interesting thought. I guess I’m looking for a way to “pull content” into EE from another site (either an independent site or one site in a MSM build). Just curious what options are out there.

MSM would work, but yes then your team would be restricted to all people using EE.
If you are using RSS, XML, or similar then you can use any system you wish and output is how you wish.

RSS is the easy bit for passing and receiving the data! The more complicated bit will be handling the data once received. You going to need to make sure you carefully filter it for bad code, make sure files are handled and saved correctly, and that everything is put into the EE channels in the correct way. So to a degree EE MSM would save you a good chunk of this effort.

RSS part, there is the plugin supplied 1st party on the EE site.
Inserting content into a channel - i guess you could learn from the SAEF and Safecracker.
But only if this is for your own use, not if your planning on selling this after!!!

MSM does sound easier though!

Hi,

I have a module called DataGrab that will let you pull content from an RSS feed (or other source) into an EE channel.

More details here: http://brandnewbox.co.uk/products/details/datagrab and here: http://devot-ee.com/add-ons/datagrab/

Andrew

@nevsie thanks very much for this info! I think I’m leaning towards MSM with this approach, because to be honest I’d like for everyone to be working on EE anyway so that I can help them with issues if they arise.

@Andrew Weaver now that is very interesting. I will definitely check that module out—it seems absolutely *perfect* for what I’m looking to do. I assume the data that’s pulled in can be stored in the DB and backed up accordingly? I just want to make sure I have one centralized backup for all of the “child” sites.

Thanks so much for your help on this, everyone! Amazing stuff here, such a great community.