[SOLVED] PHP & RSS Help Required

[stevesimo]

Hi, we have a website written in PHP and we are looking into setting up an RSS feed so that agents can use our product content on their own websites. We have never used this before so are completely new to the concept. Are there any associated costs involved with using RSS or just the time involved with setting up the data dictionary etc?

 

Is it also possible to have an RSS feed where agents can upload their products via RSS to our website? Or would they simply have to do this manually using a form on our site?  As they might be uploading multiple products it would be more convenient if they could do this in one go rather than individually.

 

To do this however am I right in assuming that they would need to write a script to generate the XML data based on the data dictionary that we supply them with so that when we receive the data it is in the correct format for reading into our database?

 

Sorry for all the questions but I am confused as to what can actually be done using RSS.  Any advice welcomed.

 

Thanks, Steve (Blackpool)

[trq]

Are there any associated costs involved with using RSS or just the time involved with setting up the data dictionary etc?

 

RSS is just another form of (XML) markup, so no, there are no costs involved.

 

Is it also possible to have an RSS feed where agents can upload their products via RSS to our website? Or would they simply have to do this manually using a form on our site?

 

As Ive stated, RSS is just XML markup, so no, it is NOT capable of uploading anything.

 

am I right in assuming that they would need to write a script to generate the XML data based on the data dictionary that we supply them with so that when we receive the data it is in the correct format for reading into our database?

 

Sounds to me like you would be best to provide your clients with a form to add new products to your database. This way you are in charge of all the formatting.

[stevesimo]

I think what we are going to do is have a password protected page which contains a form for uploading products to the site.  Then any products contained on the site can be provided to the users in the form of an RSS feed.