PHP Example – AJAX RSS Reader

An RSS Reader is used to read RSS Feeds.

AJAX RSS Reader

The following example will demonstrate an RSS reader, where the RSS-feed is loaded into a webpage without reloading:

Example Explained – The HTML Page

When a user selects an RSS-feed in the dropdown list above, a function called “showRSS()” is executed. The function is triggered by the “onchange” event:

The showRSS() function does the following:

• Check if an RSS-feed is selected
• Create an XMLHttpRequest object
• Create the function to be executed when the server response is ready
• Send the request off to a file on the server
• Notice that a parameter (q) is added to the URL (with the content of the dropdown list)

The PHP File

The page on the server called by the JavaScript above is a PHP file called “getrss.php”:

When a request for an RSS feed is sent from the JavaScript, the following happens:

• Check which feed was selected
• Create a new XML DOM object
• Load the RSS document in the xml variable
• Extract and output elements from the channel element
• Extract and output elements from the item elements