Ara RSS

Ara is an automatic editor of RSS feed. Only the links towards the Web pages must be given to him. It is able to retrieve the title and the description of the pages and to produce a syndication file in the RSS format.
It enables you to select the pages to be syndicated instead of publishing the last articles systematically as the generators included in content managers do it.

The Ara term means "Atom and RSS API", it is also the name of a species of parrots from South America.

Using Ara

The program is a set of PHP scripts which have to be stored on a Web site.
One creates a feed from the browser by entering the URL of the interface, ara.php.
It is easier to use the program with two browsers, one to display the pages to include and to copy the URLs from the URL input field, the other to edit the RSS file. Thus by just a cut and paste action one transfers the URL from the field to the interface and one clicks on "Add" to add it to the list.
The EDIT button on the left of the link makes it possible to modify the title and description if one wants.
To generate the feed, one enters the name at top if the file already exists, or at bottom for a new feed, and one clicks on the Create and RSS feed button.

Warning

Ara is not a simple editor, when a page is added, it is reads for extracting useful information and for this purpose Ara makes use of Ajax (with the Anaa framework ), but Ajax can read files only from the site where it is installed. Actually the goal is to build the feed of the site, just avoid to give URL to other sites.

How it works

It is an Ajax script with a backend in PHP 5. In the current version only the pages of the website where it is installed can be added to the feed.
It is necessary to be authenticated to use it, to this goal the install.php program allows to register a login and a password. This file must absolutely be be erased. Once registered, the user remains registered for the whole session, even if he reads other pages meanwhile.
To generate the contents automatically, the program loads the pages given in the list and reads in the head section the contents of the title and description tags. If they are missing, the first H1 tag in the body of the page will be used for the title instead.
The same if description misses, the text of the synopsis will be taken from the page instead.

Documentation

The Ara manual describes the use of the interface and the various options, as well as the architecture of the program.
The manual is written with Open Office, you can build a PDF version with the export version of the HTML processor.

Downloading

Download the zip archive

The file includes the editor and the scripts of authentification, as well as the Common RSS script to display feeds on Web pages and a demo named ara-test.php. The manual is included also.

Try

The ara directory holds a log file, ara.log. Load it (it may be displayed by notepad) in case of trouble.

Changes

• 3.0 - January 2010
  The date for the channel is now changed with each update of the feed.
  Editing the channel is now mandatory before to create a feed, to avoid missing fields that could prevent it to be loaded.
  The Show button now displays title and description of the channel.
  Added a Hide button to make space after the channel is displayed.
  ajax-check.php and ajax-test.php are included to check the system and verify it is compatible.
  Titles now encoded to prevent them to be shortened at special chars such as quotes.
  
• 2.1 - Decembre 2009
  Encoded the links to allow URLs with parameters.
• 2.0 - June 2009
  Cache disabled when the feed is loaded to be displayed.
  Descriptions are shortened at last dot when possible.
• 1.9 - December 2008 (Thanks to user for their contributions)
  Fixed the path of the RSS file on the server.
  The format of the date was wrong, but from the edit form, changed to GMT.
  
• 1.8 - October 2008
  Added option for recognition of the IP address of the webmaster to avoid entering a login. The choice of using the option is made during installation.
• 1.7 - September 2008
  Added the option "Last at top" that is checked by default. This allows you to add latest articles to the top of the list to have a descending chronological order and so you can use the feed directly to display most recent articles.
• 1.6 - April 2008
  Fixed bug about date.
  The max size of titles is now defined from the TITLE_MAX variable.
  The max size of descriptions is now defined from the DESCRIPTION_MAX variable.
  For foreign languages, HTML codes are replaced by UTF-8 characters with accents.
• 1.5 - Décember 2007
  Added the See RSS feed button.
• 1.4 - October 2007
  Display of the channel's title with the "view" button.
  The default date is the date of the day.
• 1.3 - October 2007
  Best handling of channel.
• 1.2 - September 2007
  Titles were not modified in the list after editing. Fixed.
  Removed superfluous antislashes added by Ajax in descriptions.
  The default RSS file is now taken at root of the site.
• 1.1 - August 2007
  Replaced the global variable $login in install.php by $ulogin that is local (globals are not enabled by default). Thanks to Pablo Javier to have found the bug.
• 1.0 - August 2007 - First Release.

Future of the software

Several improvements are planned:
- generation of Atom files.
- possibility of using the program remotely from a local station.
- use of the program like Web service for different sites.

Licence

The software and all scripts which it contains are under the GNU GPL 2.0 license. You are free to use the scripts on your site, but you must maintain the copyright notice containing the name of the author and the links on the site of the author (scriptol.com) if either you distribute a modified version.

Question? Go to the forum.

(c) 2007-2010 Denis Sureau. Scriptol.com