RSS2SQL v3.x Instructions Contents Introduction Installation Automatic Updating Introduction: ============= RSS2SQL is used to store the contents of RSS feeds in a database. Once the items from the feeds are in the database SQL2RSS could be used to produce new feeds, possibly based on complex selection criteria. RSS2SQL has several modules. rss2sql_admin.php is used to administer the feeds that are used to populate the database. rss2sql.php is used to build configuration files and parse the feeds into the database. rss2sql_install.php will create the database configuration file. Using automatic task scheduling, like cron(1), can be used to call rss2sql.php on a regular basis to automatically update the newest items from the feed into the database. Installation: ============= 1) Unzip the contents of the rss2sql.zip file, and copy the extracted files to a folder on your web server. The folder should be accessible from the Internet, like your regular web pages. In fact, the destination folder could be the same folder that you keep your web pages in. 2) In your browser, enter the full URL to the location of the rss2sql files, and run the install module (rss2sql_install.php). Example: http://www.FeedForAll.com/rss2sql_install.php This will bring up a page for the creation of the parameters needed to access your database and the administration module. You will need the configuration file name later, you can keep the default of "rss2sql_DBconfig.inc.php". 3) Hit the 'Submit' button at the bottom of the screen. 4) The screen will refresh and display the contents of a new configuration file in your browser. You now need to highlight that data, and copy it to an editor on your local computer (like notepad). 5) Save the new configuration file locally, being sure to use .php for the extension. 6) Upload the configuration file, and put it into the same folder as your rss2sql.php file 7) In your browser, enter the full URL to the location of the rss2sql file, and use 'buildConfig' for a parameter. Example: http://www.FeedForAll.com/rss2sql.php?buildConfig This will bring up the configuration screen for rss2sql 8) There are a lot of fields on this screen. Unless you very experienced with databases and have specific requirements it is suggested you keep all of the defaults. The default field names match the field names used by rss2html.php. 9) Hit the 'Generate configuration data' button at the bottom of the screen. 10) The screen will refresh and display the contents of a new configuration file in your browser. You now need to highlight that data, and copy it to an editor on your local computer (like notepad). 11) Save the new configuration file locally, being sure to use .php for the extension. 12) Upload the configuration file, and put it into the same folder as your rss2sql.php file 13) On the page will also be the code to create the two database tables that are needed by rss2sql. You can copy this code into the command-line utility for you database. 14) After the database tables are created you can then start adding feeds into the system. This is done with the rss2sql.php program. Example: http://www.FeedForAll.com/rss2sql_admin.php 15) You will need the admin username and password from step #2, they are case sensitive. 16) Click on "Add new feed" 17) Fill in the feed's URL. Change the "Update Interval" to the number of seconds between update if you are using automatic updates, otherwise set it to 1. 18) Click "Submit" 19) To cause the feed to be parsed and stored in the database use rss2sql.php Example: http://www.FeedForAll.com/rss2sql.php Automatic Updating: =================== If you want to have the contents of your database to be automatically updated when feeds change and your ISP is using a Un*x operating system, like FreeBSD, Linux, OS X, Solaris, etc., you can use cron(1) call rss2sql.php on a regular basis. It is not recommended that you try and fetch the feeds too often, doing so will put a load on the web server producing the feed and may cause your access to that web server be blocked. There are many different ways to force the rss2sql.php program to run from the command line. You will need to first see what programs you host offers and where they are. The three most popular are lynx, wget and fetch. To find if they exist are where they are use the following commands: whereis lynx whereis wget whereis fetch You will need the correct paths for you host, but I will show paths based on the most common location from here on. When running these in cron(1) you will probably not want any output so sample command lines are: /usr/local/bin/lynx -source http://www.FeedForAll.com/rss2sql.php > /dev/null /usr/local/bin/wget -O - http://www.FeedForAll.com/rss2sql.php > /dev/null /usr/bin/fetch -o - http://www.FeedForAll.com/rss2sql.php > /dev/null So if you wanted to check each of the feeds for updated once per hour at 13 minutes after, you could use the following sample crontab(5) entries: 13 * * * * /usr/local/bin/lynx -source http://www.FeedForAll.com/rss2sql.php > /dev/null 13 * * * * /usr/local/bin/wget -O - http://www.FeedForAll.com/rss2sql.php > /dev/null 13 * * * * /usr/bin/fetch -o - http://www.FeedForAll.com/rss2sql.php > /dev/null Copyright 2006-2007 NotePage, Inc. All rights reserved $Id: rss2sql-docs.txt,v 3.0 2007/04/16 14:23:04 housley Exp $
