I’m really hoping to find this one rather then have to build it. This should exist already. PHP is everywhere, and unaviodable. Therefore there should be a toolkit aimed at the skillset of the average PHP user.

  • As someone creating a website: I don’t want to use one of the remote, javascript based tools, that automatically fetch, and display an RSS feed, as that will slow down my webiste (while that remote call is made) and not give me the control I want.
  • As a RSS feed publisher, I would rather not have a hit to my site, everytime your PHP page is viewed.
  • As someone using PHP to publish a website, I may or may not feel comfortable with XML, but I certainly don’t want t have to think about it.
  • As a RSS feed publisher, I want to be able to use the full range of tools given me by the flexibility of RSS, particularily the modular 1.0 version.

I think a there is a need for a simple PHP tool that can:

  • fetch remote RSS feeds, and parse them into a data structure or object (or both) that is simple, and useful from within a PHP script.
  • can intelligently cache the parsed form of that remote feed to conserve resources, and speed up response.
  • whoses complexity is hidden by a simple function interface
  • makes available some of the RSS data is a format more natural to a PHP environment. e.g. providing a version of date fields that are in epoch seconds rather then W3CDTF.

Does something like the Perl Cache project exists for PHP?

UPDATE: Nothing existed which worked like I describe above, in fact very little existed in the way of real PHP RSS tools, so I built one, Magpie RSS, xml-based, caches requests.

UPDATE: jpcache looks intriguing