Natively Connect to RSS Feeds in PHP

Drop the CData ODBC Driver for RSS into your LAMP or WAMP stack to build RSS-connected Web applications. This article shows how to use PHP's ODBC built-in functions to connect to RSS feeds, execute queries, and output the results.

Configure a DSN

If you have not already, first specify connection properties in an ODBC DSN (data source name). This is the last step of the driver installation. You can use the Microsoft ODBC Data Source Administrator to create and configure ODBC DSNs.

You can connect to RSS and Atom feeds, as well as feeds with custom extensions. To connect to a feed, set the URL property. You can also access secure feeds. A variety of authentication mechanisms are supported. See the help documentation for details.

Establish a Connection

Open the connection to RSS by calling the or methods. To close connections, use or .

$conn = odbc_connect("CData ODBC RSS Source","user","password");

Connections opened with are closed when the script ends. Connections opened with the method are still open after the script ends. This enables other scripts to share that connection when they connect with the same credentials. By sharing connections among your scripts, you can save system resources, and queries execute faster.

$conn = odbc_pconnect("CData ODBC RSS Source","user","password");
...
odbc_close($conn); //persistent connection must be closed explicitly

Create Prepared Statements

Create prepared statements and parameterized queries with the function.

$query = odbc_prepare($conn, "SELECT * FROM Latest News WHERE Category = ?");

Execute Queries

Execute prepared statements with .

$conn = odbc_connect("CData ODBC RSS Source","user","password");
$query = odbc_prepare($conn, "SELECT * FROM Latest News WHERE Category = ?");
$success = odbc_execute($query, array('US'));
 

Execute nonparameterized queries with .

$conn = odbc_connect("CData ODBC RSS Source","user","password");
$query = odbc_exec($conn, "SELECT Pubdate, Author FROM RSSFeed");
 

Process Results

Access a row in the result set as an array with the function.

$conn = odbc_connect("CData ODBC RSS feeds Source","user","password");
$query = odbc_exec($conn, "SELECT Pubdate, Author FROM RSSFeed");
while($row = odbc_fetch_array($query)){
 echo $row["Author"] . "\n";
}

Display the result set in an HTML table with the function.

$conn = odbc_connect("CData ODBC RSS feeds Source","user","password");
$query = odbc_prepare($conn, "SELECT * FROM Latest News WHERE Category = ?");
$success = odbc_execute($query, array('US'));
if($success)
 odbc_result_all($query);

More Example Queries

You will find complete information on the driver's supported SQL in the help documentation. The code examples above are RSS-specific adaptations of the PHP community documentation for all ODBC functions.