Kohana PHP framework : add images nodes to your RSS feeds

Scope

This article is intended for use with Kohana 2.x version. I have tested only with the latest, which is 2.3.4 as of today.

Kohana’s « Feed » helper

The official documentation of the helper is located here :https://docs.kohanaphp.com/helpers/feed

With this helper you can easily create an RSS feed, however the method doesn’t natively support nested tags. So … won’t work and you’ll get this error :

SimpleXMLElement::addChild() expects parameter 2 to be string, array given

 Workaround : syntax in your controller

Logic tends to nest your tags into a sub-array, like this :

public function rss() {
        $info = array('title' => 'Christian Lapie', 'notes' => 'Latest updates');
        $items = ORM::factory('article')
                ->where('statut', 'publie')
                ->orderby('date', 'desc')
                ->find_all();
        $rssitems = array();
        foreach($items as $item) {
                $rssitems[] = array(
                        'title' => $item->titre,
                        'link' => Kohana::config('site.url_site').'/oeuvres/'.$item->id.'/'.url::title($item->titre),
                        'description' => $item->soustitre,
                        'author' => 'Christian Lapie',
                        'pubDate' => date("D, d M Y H:i:s +0100", strtotime($item->date)),
                        'image' => array(
                                'url' => Kohana::config('site.url_site').'/IMG/arton'.$item->id.'.jpg',
                                'title' => $item->titre,
                                'link' => Kohana::config('site.url_site').'/oeuvres/'.$item->id.'/'.url::title($item->titre)
                                )
                        );
        }
        echo feed::create($info, $rssitems);
        exit();
}

(look carefully at the image key and its sub-pairs)

 Editing Kohana’s core

It turns out to be pretty simple.
You will open the following file :

/system/helpers/feed.php

Then find the following lines (around 114)  :

// Add the info to the row
$row->addChild($name, $value);

Finally replace the block with this :

// Add the info to the row
if (is_array($value)) {
        $temp = $row->addChild($name);
        foreach($value as $key1 => $value1) {
                $temp->addChild($key1, $value1);
        }
} else {
        $row->addChild($name, $value);
}

Et voilà !
Now you can have a nicely valid  tag :

 Result

<item>
        <title>Les secrets d'un temps immense</title>
        <link>https://lapie.localhost/oeuvres/318/les-secrets-dun-temps-immense</link>
        <description>Varsovie, Blonie, Pologne (Poland)</description>
        <author>Christian Lapie</author>
        <pubDate>Wed, 12 Jan 2011 00:00:00 +0100</pubDate>
        <image>
                <url>https://lapie.localhost/IMG/arton318.jpg</url>
                <title>Les secrets d'un temps immense</title>
                <link>https://lapie.localhost/oeuvres/318/les-secrets-dun-temps-immense</link>
                </image>
</item>

You can add optional parameters such as Width, Height… see the RSS Specifications here.

Please leave comment if you have found another (official) solution !
Germain