Creating a Dynamic News Feed in PHP

In this article we look at how to create a dynamic news feed. By delivering the content of the feed as JavaScript, it can be incorporated easily into any site, as the feed is gathered by the user's browser and so does not need any special software on the host's server.

We then look at reading records from a MySQL database, putting the results in an array so that the data can be worked with easily later on in our code. We create a custom function to display a number of characters from a string, without splitting the string in the middle of a word. By making the number of characters to display a parameter of the function, we made it general- purpose, so that it can be used easily on other sites to save time in the future. We then look at displaying the news data using JavaScript.

Finally, we create a page that read a parameter from the pages URL, and uses it to select a record from the database, and we display this data on the page, so that a visitor can read the whole of their selected news item.

Grabbing an RSS Feed with PHP

A great way to add content to your site is use syndicated content from blogs, news sites etc with RSS which is Rich Site Summary (some would say Really Simple Syndication, or RDF Site Summary), and is a format used by a variety of sites for content syndication.

This tutorial uses PHP to grab the feed and incorporate it into our site. As it stands we can't do this in Dreamweaver, so we'll make a PHP script and then turn it into an extension so that you can re-use it on other pages. The PHP requires some existing understanding to make sense of, so this tutorial will be hardwork (but not impossible) for PHP newbies.

Working with Session Variables in PHP

In this tutorial, we look at using Session Variables in PHP, to store user information as a user moves backwards and forwards through the pages of a website. This allows information to be tied to a user, linking them to records in a database to create a shopping cart (for example). Session Variables are also commonly used for security systems, so that once a user has logged in their status is held in a Session Variable.

The first section that we examine is how Session Variables work, and how to enable them in PHP if they're not already enabled. We then look at how to store a value in a Session Variable, and how to avoid the common "Headers already sent" error that can occur, and how it can be stopped permanently by using Output Buffering.

We then look at how to read back a Session Variable and how to check whether a Session has been set or not. Finally, we look at when to use Session Variables and when to use Cookies, and how to destroy a Session Variable.