Example - RSS Feed

RSS for third party content

Concrete5 already has an RSS block, but its a bit tired and inflexible. If you want to do more with an RSS feed you either need to get coding for a block template and possibly a controller override, or you can explore the possibilities with Universal Content Puller.

As an RSS feed will be external to the site, the Content Source  to use will again be URL. 

Basic feed

To investigate the possibilities, we need an RSS feed. NASA is a good source. From those available, the example here uses Breaking News at https://www.nasa.gov/rss/dyn/breaking_news.rss.

The Multi Selector Content Transform can pick out items from XML data.

• Source content type - XML / XHTML
• Container css selector - channel
• Level 1 - item
• Level 2 - [blank] (for all children) + Return text with attributes, url src type title alt

For display, The Multi Level List Content Display has the flexibility to display the pulled RSS in many ways.

• Level 1 - Paragraphs + First child value
• Level 2 - Definition List, horizontal + Capitalised keys + Filter 1 Title Source Enclosure Type Guid Dc:identifier, Source Url.

The filters are to remove elements pulled from the XML that would clutter our display. Definition List, horizontal is a good list type as it shows all the headings (keys), so can help identify what to add to the filter.

Make frequent use of the Preview button to review the incoming data to the transform and display.

As the RSS feed can be long, its an ideal place to explore the pagination capabilities of UCP. Here the pagination is set very low so we don't fill too much of this page.

• Outer list items to display - 2
• Paginate - Below
• Include block identity in pagination - No

By leaving out the block identity in the pagination, all variations of the RSS feed shown on this page will paginate together!

In the Advanced tab, the main settings we need are the Advanced Autolinker and to Render Image URLs as Images. An important point here is that the settings don't change the file size of images, just the maximum size they are displayed.

Getting the items in order

By default, the various elements are shown in the sequence they are declared in the XML of the RSS feed. That can be changed by entering a Shuffle sequence for the second list level.

The version below has a Shuffle set to Pubdate, Description, Enclosure Url, Link.

Removing the titles

For a variation, the Level 2 list type can be set to Paragraphs + none.

As a side effect, the Level 2 items no longer have headings, so they can only be filtered and shuffled by number. Hence an intermediary step is to set Paragraphs + Number 1,2,3 to see the numbers of the items. Then make a note of the numbers to filter, below these are 1 2 5 8 9 10, then change to Paragraphs + none for the finished list.

Having filtered, the numbers for shuffling are reset to a contguous 1,2,3... Here we need to actually count from the start of our filtered numbers. The publication date is the 4th item and the rest are already in the sequence we want, so simply setting Shuffle to 4 will achieve the desired effect.

[code]<style>
.ucp-body.example-styled .ucp-item-2-2{
    font-size:80%; 
    font-style:italic;
} 
.ucp-body.example-styled .ucp-item-2-1{ 
    float:right;
    margin-left:15px; 
} 
.ucp-body.example-styled .ucp-item-2-1 img{
    max-width:200px; 
} 
.ucp-body.example-styled h3{ 
    clear:both; 
} </style>[/code]

1. RSS Feed - Source

2. RSS Feed - Transform

3. RSS Feed - Display

4. RSS Feed - Advanced