RSS Feed :: Parsing

I was searching around to find out how to parse the RSS feed using either PHP or jQuery and finally came upon a script that will take an RSS feed (using jQuery) and output the information into a friendly format that is easy to customize.

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/226663/parse-rss-with-jquery

This is something that I will definitely use come time to parse a feed.

RSS Feeds

RSS = Really Simple Syndication

RSS is used for a variety of different things, but is mainly used for streaming a news feed to the public.  Instead of visiting every single site, trying to catch up on news from every source, a person can use an RSS Aggregator which pulls in all the news feeds from each site he is subscribed to.  Some popular sites that aggregate these feeds are Google Reader and Yahoo Pipes.  Apple's Mail application also has an option to bring feeds in along with your email, so you can get all of your important information in one location.

RSS is formatted using XML to store its data.  Each line item is stored in an <item> tag with the following sub tags to store pieces of data about that particular item:

• <title> - The title of the article
• <link> - A link to where the article is located on the hosts' server
• <author> - The email address of the author
• <category> - Which type of categories the article relates to
• <pubDate> - Date that the article was published

References:

http://www.whatisrss.com/

http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/rss/rss.html#hrelementsOfLtitemgt

jQuery Mobile

This is a library that I have used a decent amount at the company I work for:

http://www.flintenergies.com/mobile/home.aspx

Here is a website developed on the Sitefinity CMS using jQuery Mobile as its interface.  Fairly simple syntax to learn and deploy, but all the kinks are not out of it quite yet.  I had quite a few issues with page transitions - meaning, when a link was clicked, it would not transition to the next page.  It did have quite a few features that allowed it to do motion transitions, which was very nice, but did not work across all mobile platforms.

Can this be used in conjunction with PhoneGap?  I do not know quite yet.  Once I dive into PhoneGap, I will then be able to determine how useful this will be for the RSS program.

Dreamweaver: Sidenote

I saw this while poking around PhoneGap's website today: http://blogs.nitobi.com/andre/index.php/2011/04/12/adobe-dreamweaver-5-5-supports-phonegap/

It looks like Adobe "partnered" with PhoneGap, and in their CS5.5 release, PhoneGap integrates with Dreamweaver to make the configuring for Android much less painful.

HTML5

First glance at HTML5 for the semester, and where do I start?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTML5

Just some thoughts about some of the new additions to HTML5:

• Finally, tags for standard video and audio.  Rather than having to enclose embed tags with object tags, now everything is combined into a simple <video> or <audio>.  Much cleaner and much less code is needed.
• <canvas> - possibly the "Flash Killer."  Now people can code out animations.  Adobe has even went ahead and created a program called Edge that will allow you to code these new HTML5 animations.  Good for Adobe!  Thinking ahead incase something does happen to Flash and the Canvas feature does take over.  At least it covered itself in case of a future collapse.  By the way, the application is in BETA testing, so it's FREE.

Also, another cool website that I found that displays a nice, long list of new features is http://html5demos.com/

Course Synopsis

This course will be an exploration into mobile application development.  I will be diving into PhoneGap to better understand how it works, and how it can be deployed for Android and possibly for iOS (see "Schedule" post for info about iOS).  This course will allow me to get a deeper understanding of the following:

• HTML5 and CSS3
• RSS Feeds and parsing them
• A deeper knowledge of how to use an IDE (such as Eclipse)
• How to combine all three of those into a working mobile web application
• And how to deploy it onto the web

The final deliverables of the project will be:

• Working mobile application that reads in an RSS feed
• Tutorial for others on how to create it themselves

If there are any questions, feel free to let me know!

Scheduling

Here is the schedule that I propose for this semester.  I left it somewhat open towards the end, knowing that programming is always slammed at the end.  I am hoping to get things done ahead of schedule, but we will see how that goes.


NOTE: iOS needs developer license costing $99 for a full calendar year (cheapest and shortest licensing option).  Would you suggest that this be the "book" for this class that I will purchase?

August 22nd - August 26th

• Write about Objectives
• Post Schedule
• Download appropriate SDKs for Android and PhoneGap

August 29nd - September 2nd

• Study through HTML5 and CSS3
• Mobile Javascript Library

September 5th - September 9th

• Study into RSS Feeds
• What platforms work best
• How to integrate an outside feed into another website
• If needed: how to hand-code the parsing of each string in the Feed

September 12th - September 16th

• Take a look at Yahoo Pipes
• See how it aggregates everything
• Test feed outputs

September 19th - September 23rd

• Move outside RSS feed into sample website
• I'll take a website that I have already created and attempt to add the Yahoo Pipes feed into the website.  The reason behind this is that:
• 1) it should be relatively simple to set up. I have the code base done, I would potentially just have to add some style properties
• 2) If there are any hiccups in this process, I will be able to iron them out here before I attempt to develop it from scratch using the SDKs

September 26th - September 30th

• If problems existed from the week prior, troubleshooting may flow over into this week.
• Once troubleshooting is over, I will develop a simple website in Eclipse
• Attempt to apply PhoneGap to the simple website (this will probably carry over into next week, as this will be the most time-consuming part)
• Upload application to the web (Dr. Piercy: Have you uploaded a website from Eclipse to the web?  If so, around this time, maybe you can provide a helping hand if my research didn't cover everything I needed to know)

October 3rd - October 7th

• Applying PhoneGap to Android

October 10th - October 14th

• Applying PhoneGap to Android

October 17th - October 21st

• 1) Applying PhoneGap to iPhone *

October 24th - October 28th

• Applying PhoneGap to iPhone *

October 31st - November 4th

• Write up tutorial on how to create the application

November 10th