September 28, 2007

I can't leave well enough alone

Some people are willing to settle with the technology that is handed to them... but not me. I have to break it apart and understand why it works. This has been true with this whole RW Updates project. It started with a RapidWeaver Snippet, then a multi-feed website, then Authors were posted, with links to their site... Keep in mind that I am using php to automate this whole process.

So what was next? RSS Feed for the artificially generated Daily Digest "blog"? I had never really spent a lot of time in an XML file but knew it was a simple enough syntax structure but could I hack some php into that and build an effective (not to mention functioning) RSS Feed?

I was able to find one other guy who had attempted the same but the platform from which he was starting and where I intended to be was so grossly different that I feared I would have waisted too much time trying to "port" my code into his xml layout. So I cracked open an xml file that RapidWeaver generated and just started to apply php in the way I think I would have liked to see it work.

With a bit fussing and farting around I managed to get something near to what I actually want. In the end I ended up using two commands from that other guy. I liked the way he limited the number of items but I think I am going to go back to the aging technique I was using.

Is this still a work in progress? You bet it is. And I am loving every minute of it.

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