Displaying RSS as HTML

[Mike Fishcake]

I'm looking for a simple script to display one of our RSS feeds as HTML on a display we've got in our office. The only customisation I need on it is to have our banner graphic at the top, and to make sure the fonts are nice and big - nothing needs to be clickable, in fact, it probably only needs to display the title of the items posted on the list. There are loads and loads of RSS to HTML scripts on the web, but I've no idea how many are any good, and they're probably more complicated than they need to be.

Any ideas?

[Firejack]

I've been looking to do the same thing lately. After many hours research I'm currently trying Google AJAX Feed API. With a little patience it seems you can get a lot done and a pretty snazzy result.
Seems to be actively in development too. With a new version in testing.
So many projects seemed dead or inactive, leaving me unwilling to try them.

http://code.google.com/apis/ajaxfeeds/

Give it a try and let me know what you think.


PS Who the hell uses the word "snazzy" these days. Apparently I do! Hope it won't get me banned on these forums?

[yamangman]

In a browser?

[Steve]

I doubt you'd want to bother, but there's always the "proper way":

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XSLT#Ex...ML_to_XHTML.29

[scaryjim]

I doubt you'd want to bother, but there's always the "proper way":

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XSLT#Ex...ML_to_XHTML.29

Pretty much what I was coming in to say. It might actually be the easiest way to handle it if you control the feed and it's literally just for displaying stuff, too. Is this for proper work or something personal / on the side?

[Mblaster]

I doubt you'd want to bother, but there's always the "proper way":

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XSLT#Ex...ML_to_XHTML.29

As Steve says. I wrote one of these for this exact purpose a year or two back, XSLT isn't the nicest thing to use but it worked well, and it's highly customisable.

[Mike Fishcake]

Basically, we had a spare plasma screen (yeah, I know) in our office that wasn't being used, and as it's quite a large office we thought we could have a nice big screen to display service announcements, scheduled downtimes, new knowledge base articles etc. We've got that set up now, using screensaver software that flips through HTML pages every 15 seconds, and as the service announcement stuff comes through as an RSS feed, we'd like to be able to display it. We have tried displaying the actual web page for that one, but even with text size enlarged it isn't really large enough.

I'll have a look about doing it the proper way - If anything it'll be an interesting project for something I've never done before

[MarcLister]

using screensaver software that flips through HTML pages every 15 seconds

I'm doing something similar at work and I could do with having more control over the RSS feed than the program I'm using is letting me. Would you mind giving me the name of the screensaver software so I can evaluate it and see if its easier to work with than the program I've been lumbered with?

[Mike Fishcake]

I'm doing something similar at work and I could do with having more control over the RSS feed than the program I'm using is letting me. Would you mind giving me the name of the screensaver software so I can evaluate it and see if its easier to work with than the program I've been lumbered with?

Yep - http://www.softpedia.com/get/Interne.../view-IT.shtml

It's free for personal use, only US$5 for small businesses/schools or $12 for larger business and HE institutions. Pocket change!

It uses IE's engine to display the pages, so any config changes you make in IE will reflect on ViewIT. I've got it set to maximum font size and with page caching turned off, so it's forced to re-check the page every time. Not sure if we're actually going to use it properly yet, but if we do, it's certainly filled the gap that we need.

[MarcLister]

Yep - http://www.softpedia.com/get/Interne.../view-IT.shtml

It's free for personal use, only US$5 for small businesses/schools or $12 for larger business and HE institutions. Pocket change!

It uses IE's engine to display the pages, so any config changes you make in IE will reflect on ViewIT. I've got it set to maximum font size and with page caching turned off, so it's forced to re-check the page every time. Not sure if we're actually going to use it properly yet, but if we do, it's certainly filled the gap that we need.

Thanks Mike. Amazing price. I might try it at home first and then see if I can persuade work (school) to buy it.

[MarcLister]

and as the service announcement stuff comes through as an RSS feed, we'd like to be able to display it.

Sorry to bother you again Mike. I've just installed ViewIT and I love it. I can see the power of it already and I think it is much better than the software I was given to play with at work. I can't work out with that how to have different pages whereas with ViewIT its so much easier to just put a load of files in and use the ini file to load each HTML page for x seconds.

My problem so far is the RSS. I would like to have it auto-updating but I can't work out how to integrate it into the test HTML page I have. I know how to link to the RSS we want to use (BBC News) but not actually to display it as this is for a display screen which won't have a keyboard or mouse for control.

I've found ways to add RSS but they seem website related and not really suitable for an offline HTML page. Have you found out how to display your RSS as a live, automatically updating feed? The program we use currently takes the RSS and scrolls through each news item and adds/removes stories according to the state of the feed.

[Mike Fishcake]

Sorry to bother you again Mike. I've just installed ViewIT and I love it. I can see the power of it already and I think it is much better than the software I was given to play with at work. I can't work out with that how to have different pages whereas with ViewIT its so much easier to just put a load of files in and use the ini file to load each HTML page for x seconds.

My problem so far is the RSS. I would like to have it auto-updating but I can't work out how to integrate it into the test HTML page I have. I know how to link to the RSS we want to use (BBC News) but not actually to display it as this is for a display screen which won't have a keyboard or mouse for control.

I've found ways to add RSS but they seem website related and not really suitable for an offline HTML page. Have you found out how to display your RSS as a live, automatically updating feed? The program we use currently takes the RSS and scrolls through each news item and adds/removes stories according to the state of the feed.

TBH I've not done much work on it since, but I did have some sort of progress using the Google AJAX Feed API - http://code.google.com/apis/ajaxfeeds/ - Didn't get it to do what I wanted it to, but you may be able to adapt it for your use?

[MarcLister]

Hi Mike. Yeah I found that last night but it wants a key and for the key it wants a website. We're not going to be using this on a website!

Just wondering if I can use the code below but remove the script line that has the key?

<script type="text/javascript" src="http://www.google.com/jsapi?key=YOUR_KEY_HERE"></script

<html>
  <head>
    <script type="text/javascript" src="http://www.google.com/jsapi?key=YOUR_KEY_HERE"></script>
    <script type="text/javascript">

    google.load("feeds", "1");

    function initialize() {
      var feed = new google.feeds.Feed("http://www.digg.com/rss/index.xml");
      feed.load(function(result) {
        if (!result.error) {
          var container = document.getElementById("feed");
          for (var i = 0; i < result.feed.entries.length; i++) {
            var entry = result.feed.entries[i];
            var div = document.createElement("div");
            div.appendChild(document.createTextNode(entry.title));
            container.appendChild(div);
          }
        }
      });
    }
    google.setOnLoadCallback(initialize);

    </script>
  </head>
  <body>
    <div id="feed"></div>
  </body>
</html>