ThemBid.com

Create A Simple RSS Reader With Ruby on Rails

I recently had to create a lightweight Ruby on Rails RSS Reader for the Notifir.com project, which we fund. I did not want to add any libraries for the best portability. Following is all the code you need to grab RSS feeds and display them on your site.

The following can go either in the controller or in a plugin:

class Reader
  def initialize(url)
    response = open(url).read
    @doc = REXML::Document.new(response)
  end

  def getFeeds()
    titles = []
    links = []
    titles_w_links = []
    @doc.elements.each("rss/channel/item/title") { |element|
      @titles << element.text
    }
    @doc.elements.each("rss/channel/item/link") { |element|
      @links << element.text
    }
  end
  count = 0
  @titles.each {|title|
    titles_w_links << "#{title}"
    count += 1
  }
  return titles_w_links
end

Then use this code in the view:

<%
require 'open-uri'
require 'rexml/document'
rss = RSSReader::Reader.new()
feeds = rss.getFeeds()
feeds.each { |feed|
%>
  <%=feed%>
<%
}
%>