<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!-- Reviewed: no -->
<sect1 id="zend.feed.introduction">
    <title>Introduction</title>
    <para>
        <classname>Zend_Feed</classname> provides functionality for consuming RSS and Atom feeds.
        It provides a natural syntax for accessing elements of feeds, feed attributes, and entry
        attributes. <classname>Zend_Feed</classname> also has extensive support for modifying feed
        and entry structure with the same natural syntax, and turning the result back into XML. In
        the future, this modification support could provide support for the Atom Publishing
        Protocol.
    </para>

    <para>
        Programmatically, <classname>Zend_Feed</classname> consists of a base
        <classname>Zend_Feed</classname> class, abstract <classname>Zend_Feed_Abstract</classname>
        and <classname>Zend_Feed_Entry_Abstract</classname> base classes for representing Feeds and
        Entries, specific implementations of feeds and entries for RSS and Atom, and a
        behind-the-scenes helper for making the natural syntax magic work.
    </para>

    <para>
        In the example below, we demonstrate a simple use case of retrieving an RSS feed and
        saving relevant portions of the feed data to a simple PHP array, which could then be used
        for printing the data, storing to a database, etc.
    </para>

    <note>
        <title>Be aware</title>
        <para>
            Many RSS feeds have different channel and item properties available. The RSS
            specification provides for many optional properties, so be aware of this when writing
            code to work with RSS data.
        </para>
    </note>

    <example id="zend.feed.introduction.example.rss">
        <title>Putting Zend_Feed to Work on RSS Feed Data</title>
        <programlisting language="php"><![CDATA[
// Fetch the latest Slashdot headlines
try {
    $slashdotRss =
        Zend_Feed::import('http://rss.slashdot.org/Slashdot/slashdot');
} catch (Zend_Feed_Exception $e) {
    // feed import failed
    echo "Exception caught importing feed: {$e->getMessage()}\n";
    exit;
}

// Initialize the channel data array
$channel = array(
    'title'       => $slashdotRss->title(),
    'link'        => $slashdotRss->link(),
    'description' => $slashdotRss->description(),
    'items'       => array()
    );

// Loop over each channel item and store relevant data
foreach ($slashdotRss as $item) {
    $channel['items'][] = array(
        'title'       => $item->title(),
        'link'        => $item->link(),
        'description' => $item->description()
        );
}
]]></programlisting>
    </example>
</sect1>
<!--
vim:se ts=4 sw=4 et:
-->