I'm planning on making an XML feed for members to quickly access the latest updated threads on my website forum.

To be honest, I have rushed into it without reading many tutorials other than how to structure XML.

This is my code so far:

PHP Code:

<?php

$your_data = "<?xml version=\"1.0\"?><rss version=\"2.0\"><channel><title>The Channel Title Goes Here</title><description>The explanation of how the items are related goes here</description><link>http://www.directoryoflinksgohere</link><item><title>The Title Goes Here</title><description>The description goes here</description><link>http://www.linkgoeshere.com</link></item></channel></rss>";

// Open the file and erase the contents if any
$fp = fopen("feed.xml", "w");

// Write the data to the file
fwrite($fp, $your_data);

// Close the file
fclose($fp);

?>

In a fully-completed code, the $your_data variable would be a database output of the most recently updated threads.

My problem lies in that there are some boards on my forum that are hidden from members and are inaccessible to them and of course, I don't want those threads to be shown on the feed. However, they should be shown to SOME people, but not others.

By the system of coding I have above, I would include the above code on every page of my website so that everytime somebody loaded a page, the database would be queried and the feed would update.

- Could someone tell me if what I described above has a solution
and if
- I'm on completely the wrong track and where I can go to find the best information.

if i'm understanding you correctly, if someone can't view the page anyway, than they won't see the feed on that page.

You just need two feeds as I see it. One unfiltered available to secure level users only. A second feed available to all but with secure level threads filtered out.

The Xml file itself does not need to be written as this would produce a static Xml file with no dynamic capability. Just produce a php page with the recordset defined (SELECT FROM, mysql_query ,mysql_fetch_assoc etc) then to ensure its parsed as Xml the header should be defined :

// recordset here

// Start the RSS Feed

header('Content-type: text/xml'); // Must declare the content type
echo '<?xml version=\'1.0\' encoding=\'UTF-8\'?>';

// Set RSS version.

echo '
<rss version=\'2.0\'> ';

// Start the XML.

echo '
<channel><title>The forum title goes here</title>...<item>threads etc</item> </channel>
</rss>'

Works for me