Introducing PhpPlanet: PHP feed aggregation software

nospam@example.com (Diederik van der Boor) — Mon, 27 Nov 2006 00:35:00 +0100

One of the things I really wanted to implement was a "Planet KMess" section at the KMess website. I've been looking for existing solutions, but couldn't find what I was looking for. I don't need expanding sections, or forum/e-mail like "mark as read" capabilities. Just a simple web page with all stories, posted in order.

As for why I'm not using Planet: the Planet KDE site is flooded with old feeds now and then. I don't want to see that happening for a "Planet KMess" website. Planet is written in Python and uses a file-based cache. This is a complete black box for me as Python illiterate, and adds Python as new dependency to the web site.

The result is a new Planet-like feed reader/aggregator named PhpPlanet. It is v0.1 software and can be downloaded here. It stores feeds in a MySQL database, and uses Snoopy/MagpieRSS to parse the feeds. Flooding is avoided by observing the timestamp of RSS entries. When multiple entries have the same timestamp it's an indication the feed is regenerated, and those entries will be rejected automatically.

vdboor - Technology

Introducing PhpPlanet: PHP feed aggregation software