I'm fairly new to PHP, and I'm trying to write a script that solves the following
I have an RSS feed that gets saved to my server every 10 minutes (copied from elsewhere).
There is a problem with the timestamps (pubDate tag) on the RSS feed, they always have the correct date but 00:00:00 GMT as the timestamp (I have no control over this).
Therefor, when I use an autotweeting program to tweet updates from the feed (it checks it every hour or so), it won't - It only tweets the first update of each day as a result.
Therefor, what I'm trying to do to fix it to some degree is to check if the feed has changed, and if it has, change the saved pubDate to the current server time on only the new items.
I'm also kind of confused as to how I can have it check for changes - If I have a corrected version (with fairly accurate timestamps) saved to my server, it will ALWAYS think there are changes, because the timestamps will always be 00:00:00. I'm thinking, check both feeds for items including the full strings such as <guid isPermaLink="true">http://services.runescape.com/m=adventurers-log/a=161/display_player_profile.ws?searchName=A13d&id=-463827091</guid> - Since the id= at the end stays constant, it would only change the <pubDate> of items found to be new.
http://services.runescape.com/m=adventurers-log/a=161/rssfeed?searchName=A13d Here is a feed as an example. If anyone could get me started or point me to some kind of tutorial that might help, I'd really appreciate it. This is over my head, but something I need to learn how to do.
Maybe there is something wrong with your code parsing the timestamp, date format perhaps?
I believe the method of doing full string comparisons(<title> & <description>) between items with the same <guid> is your best bet. Here is some reading about RSS duplicate detection if you are interested.
Related
I would like to make full use out of MySQL for the purpose of a (web) application I have developed for a chiropractor.
So far I have been storing in a single row for [every year] for what are called progress notes. The table structure looks something like this (progress_note_id, patient_id, date (Y-0-0), progress_note). When the client wishes to append for the year of the current progress notes, he simply clicks at the top of a textarea (html), which I use TinyMCE JavaScript library, to make a new entry date along with the shorthand notes to go at the beginning of the column (progress_note). So far its been working ok, if there are 900+ clients (est.) there could potentially be 1300+ progress notes, for each year since the beginning of the application (2018).
Now the client wishes to be able to see previous progress notes (history), but is unable to modify any previous notes, while still be able to write new ones. The solution I have come up with is to use XML inside the textarea, and use PHP to decipher the new notes from the old ones.
My problem however is if I should have to convert my entire table from a yearly to a daily, that it could take up a lot of time and energy to convert multiple notes into each single rows, (est. 10x) Which could end up being 13,000+ rows. I realize that no matter what method I choose to do is going to be a lot of work. Another way around this perhaps I found was to use XML column type in MySQL to potentially store multiple records, and if I wish to append it, all I would need is PHP to interpret the entire XML and add a new child node, to the beginning. Each progress note is 255 - 500 chars. And in worst case scenario, if the patient was to be 52 times a year (1 for every week), there shouldn't be a large enough overhead.
Is this the correct way to solving this problem? I do wish to keep with MySQL DB and I realize that MySQL is not an intended for XML. And for some clarification, what I hope to accomplish is the same thing I intended to do with current progress notes, but with XML. I believe in ascending order (newer -> oldest).
<xml_result>
<progress_note>
<date>2020-08-16</date>
<content></content>
</progress_note>
<xml_result>
Thank-you for any of your time and for any suggestions.
Firstly, 13000+ is not a problem for mysql. In most case for web application, mysql can handle more than 10m+ records for a single instance with a good performance.
Secondly, you can use either XML or JSON format in a text field and handle the decoding in your application.
I am trying to add a Google calendar to a website I'm making that the client will be able to update themselves. I found this: http://mikeclaffey.com/google-calendar-into-html/ which has been quite helpful, but I am a bit stuck.
The website I am building is using PHP template and the page contents is contained within the $content variable. Here is the link I'm working on: http://victoriasawyer.com/AmosTheTransparent.
The calendar feed is the top one of the two lists of Tour Dates. I would like the top one to look similar to the bottom one. The same would be ideal but not necessary.
The biggest issue I'm having is with the start date and time. In the title of the event I would like just the date to show (preferably like 10/03/14) not the time. I have figured out how to display just the time separately without issue. Is there some way to change the date format?
The other issue I'm having is the order that the events are appearing. I would like the events to show with the soonest one first in the list and the furthest one last in the list. I added the additional parameters as instructed in the tutorial (orderby=starttime and sortorder=ascending) but they do not display correctly.
The url I am using is: https://www.google.com/calendar/feeds/qmfadhgtq2kmabsi3dlb456v98%40group.calendar.google.com/public/full?orderby=starttime&sortorder=ascending&futureevents=true&alt=json. Is there something I can adjust or add to fix the order?
Any help will be much appreciated (even if you can recommend an alternative. It just needs to be customizable, and so far this seems to be the best option I have found).
You can use PHP's DateTime class like this:
$date = new DateTime('Sun Nov 16 2014 00:30:00 GMT+0000');
echo $date->format('Y-m-d');
You can then use the predefined formats in PHP which are listed here to format it into whatever style you like.
echo $date->format('d/m');
echo $date->format('d/m/Y');
I have done a search but I can't really find anything related to what I am needing. I am not sure if I am searching for it correctly or not. I have an XML file that is created via PHP and populated with data from a form. What I am trying to do is delete certain entries in that XML file after X amount of time. Is there an easy way to do this or can it even be done at all. I was thinking of some php script that was run by a CRON to check the XML file and delete certain entries by the timestamp after X amount of time. Can someone provide some suggestions or get me pointed in the right direction?
-Thanks!
To remove the old nodes from an XML file in a PHP script, you would need to parse the XML file, using, for example, the SimpleXML (http://www.php.net/manual/en/simplexml.examples-basic.php) library.
You can then check each of the nodes in question to see whether a timestamp attribute/child value is less than the current time - 12 hours, and if so, remove that node.
This assumes that the nodes have a timestamp attribute or value - you may need to add this in where you create the XML in PHP, for example
<anode created="2013/06/04 12:00">
//
</anode>
Lastly, to perform the date comparison, you will want to use an if statement similar to the following;
$timestamp = strtotime($domElement->getAttribute('timestamp'));
if ($timestamp < strtotime('now - 12 hour')) {
// remove node
}
I'm trying to make a chat history system. So every time a person says hi to one another, they can also say something else. And each of those hi's, i wan't to add what they wrote into a history html file. Being something like this:
James Said: Hi Richard, i saw that hardware you told me about, it is compatible with our software!.
At: 23 November 2011 - 23:09 UTC-08.
________________________________________________________________________________________
Richard Said: Nice!! let's start working with it this week, the project has to be finished before the end of the world.
At: 24 November 2011 - 09:23 UTC-08.
________________________________________________________________________________________
The html file i can build with php, but how do i save it to a MySQL BLOB? Without storing it in a directory (directly to the BLOB).
You're approach to this problem isn't really a good one.
If you try to store the data in a particular output format then you're in real trouble if you suddenly find you need the data in a different format.
You're much better off just storing the particulars of the conversation, and then generating the output to display from the stored conversation. That way you can easily present it in all kinds of formats you might need it in.
EDIT TO ADD:
Something else I should have mentioned (but forgot thanks to all the Christmas brandy ;) ), trying to store the conversation data in a single big block of data will negate most of the advantages using a relational database can confer in the first place. You couldn't, for example, easily store the timestamp of each line of the conversation, or search the database for particular items in the conversation. You could find workarounds of course, but given databases are already designed to solve those kinds of problems anyway, you'd just be wasting effort and your solution wouldn't measure up to what the database already provides.
Since it is not really a binary (the B in Blob), but HTML, I suggest you use the MEDIUMTEXT type and deal with it as just a normal text field.
RSS feed being generated on demand.
As far as I can see, for I have 2 options for lastBuildDate - current time or pubDate.
Which one would you choose and why?
According to the RSS 2.0 spec, lastBuildDate is the last time the content of the channel changed. (I'm not entirely satisfied with this definition because what if the feed's meta data changes? I think the common convention is to update lastBuildDate in that case, too.)
The channel-wide pubDate is supposed to be used for the original publication date of the items in the feed. It is never a good value to use for lastBuildDate because the pubDate is to stay unchanged even if the item gets updated.
Using the current time is the easy way out, but it's not perfect (because clients may start unnecessary operations due to the changed lastBuildDate)
The best way would be to actually know / find out when the feed's content last changed, and output that.
Related question
The item having the newest PubDate should become the lastBuildTime.
[EDIT]: If there is a separate PubDate you are using too for whole feed, then lastBuildTime should be current time because you are building it at current time on-demand :).
[EDIT]: 2:: As lastBuildTime is optional and you're anyways including PubDate for whole feed, why not remove it from your feed output?