PHP access to iTunes tags in an RSS feed

Question

I need to get access to the iTunes tags in an RSS feed using PHP. I've used simplepie before for podcast feeds, but I'm not sure how to get the iTunes tags using it. Is there a way to use simplepie to do it or is there a better way?

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Okay I tried Simple XML.

All this (the code below) seems to work

$feed = simplexml_load_file('http://sbhosting.com/feed/');
$channel = $feed->channel;
$channel_itunes = $channel->children('http://www.itunes.com/dtds/podcast-1.0.dtd');
$summary = $channel_itunes->summary;
$subtitle = $channel_itunes->subtitle;
$category = $channel_itunes->category;
$owner = $channel_itunes->owner->name;

Now I need to get the itunes categories. The seem to be represented in several ways. In this case I get the follow XML:

<itunes:category text="Technology"/>
<itunes:category text="Technology">
  <itunes:category text="Software How-To"/>
</itunes:category> 

I would expect to be able to get the category with something like this:

$category_text = $channel_itunes->category['text'];

But that does not seem to work.

I've seen other ways to represent the category that I really don't know who to get.

For example:

Technology Business Education

Is this a media thing or a itunes thing or both?

Thanks For Your Help. G

Candiecandied

Answer 1

This code works for me:

//$pie is a SimplePie object
$iTunesCategories=$pie->get_channel_tags(SIMPLEPIE_NAMESPACE_ITUNES,'category');
if ($iTunesCategories) {
  foreach ($iTunesCategories as $iTunesCategory) {
    $category=$iTunesCategory['attribs']['']['text'];
    $subcat=$iTunesCategory['child']["http://www.itunes.com/dtds/podcast-1.0.dtd"]['category'][0]['attribs']['']['text'];
    if ($subcat) {
      $category.=":$subcat";
    }
    //do something with $category
  }
}

Connelly

Doug, First it's an honer to have you answer my question. I'm a big fan of your work all around. This code worked great for me. Thanks Glenn – Candiecandied

Answer 2

SimplePie has a get_item_tags() function that should let you access them.

Roo

Answer 3

To get the attribute with SimpleXML, instead:

$category_text = $channel_itunes->category['text'];

Use:

$category_text = $channel_itunes->category->attributes()->text;

Propulsion

Answer 4

<?php echo $feed_item->children('itunes', true)->image->attributes()->href;?>

Multilateral

Answer 5

If you have PHP5, using Simple XML can help in parsing the info you need.

Mediatize