Validating an RSS Feed with PHP

PHP
1

I have a project I’m working on that a user can submit an RSS Feed with his blog submission.

I need to check this RSS Feed and make sure it’s valid before I let the submission go through. How do I do this??

I found this class, but it doesn’t work for me at all:
http://www.phpclasses.org/browse/package/2976.html

I also found this, but the reply is vague and doesn’t help me:

Any help would be GREATLY appreciated!!

2

simplexml_load_string returns false on errors, maybe that will do the trick.

3

Personally, I would validate the RSS using an external resource / service / API.

Say for example, we had this feed from Ebay:-

http://www.ebay.co.uk/rss/somefeed.xml

I would use cURL to obtain the page generated from this URL

http://feedvalidator.org/check.cgi?url=http://www.ebay.co.uk/rss/somefeed.xml

If within that source we had the string “This is a valid RSS feed” , Bingo!

Just some random thinking and putting it out there.

4

That’s what my first example used, but it didn’t work… do you know of any sample code that would help me out?

I appreciate the quick responses!

5

Sure.


<?php

function validateFeed( $sFeedURL )
{

    $sValidator = 'http://feedvalidator.org/check.cgi?url=';
    
    if( $sValidationResponse = @file_get_contents($sValidator . urlencode($sFeedURL)) )
    {
        if( stristr( $sValidationResponse , 'This is a valid RSS feed' ) !== false )
        {
            return true;
        }
        else
        {
            return false;
        }
    }
    else
    {
        return false;
    }
}

?>

Happy hunting!

SilverB.

6

Thanks very much!

7