Computer Association of SIUE - Forums

Okay guys (and girl),

I'm going to be involved in a project where I need to pull text from RSS feeds.  I've not dealt with too much web based coding, nor the back end of an RSS feed.  

So I guess what I'm looking for here is some general direction.  Something is making me think a Pearl-ish something or another lol.

Thanks,
Scott

Use Java and StAX if you want to use a pull-based parser.  Java's HDOM is good if you need to use a tree-based parser.

There isn't a backend to RSS; it's simply structured XML.

Personally, I'd avoid perl, but it's up to you.

Looks like i have lots of learning to do :)

I (obviously) would suggest trying Ruby. There is a Ruby library available called Hpricot that parses html (and xml (and pretty much any ml)) and allows for really easy accessing of everything.

Ex.

Digg's RSS
 

 
   
    en-ushttp://digg.com/
    Digg
   
     
      http://digg.com/offbeat_news/Your_Blog_Might_Suck_If
      IÃ,¿m not sure why but Jeff FoxworthyÃ,¿s Ã,¿You might be a redneckÃ,¿ routine always stuck with me. So, with a tip of the hat to the original, IÃ,¿d like to present Ã,¿Your Blog Might SuckÃ,¿.
     
      Wed, 31 Oct 2007 15:50:12 GMT
      http://digg.com/offbeat_news/Your_Blog_Might_Suck_If
      184
      msaleemhttp://digg.com/users/msaleem/m.png
      Offbeat News
      40
   
 



Small Ruby Program

require 'hpricot'

# Parses the xml into an Hpricot object
doc = Hpricot( digg_xml )

# Prints out the title and description to std out
puts "Title: " + (doc % 'item/title').inner_html
puts "Description: " + (doc % 'item/description').inner_html


Hope this helps. I promise it won't hurt to try Ruby.

Depends on the performance necessary.  Java offers much better performance than ruby, but if it's something small, then okay.

I'm not yet sure on problem set size.  I'm under the impression that computer resources will not be an issue.

Very Interesting stuff though.