Combining Multiple RSS Feeds for Facebook
I was on a quest to combine multiple RSS feeds into a single ordered aggregated RSS feed. This is because Facebook provides a nice function to import an RSS feed into your notes. Unfortunately, they only support importing from a single RSS feed. I have both a Blog RSS feed and a Gallery2 RSS feed.
I tried www.feedcombine.com and was nearly happy, until I realized that they truncated my notes. If you do not mind having truncated notes and forcing users to come to your site to view the full entry, I recommend this solution. They do not even require you to sign up for an account!
I also tried www.feedbite.com, and was not as happy. This site requires a user registration. They also have a somewhat unintuitive interface for adding feeds to a “bundle”. This bundle then, after waiting nearly 15 minutes for it to cache the feeds (sorry, I need instant gratification…or at most 1-2 minutes), I had some results. The output was not ordered (everything was jumbled…)
FrankenFeed (www.frankenfeed.com) is quite pretty. There is a sign up. I made a frankenfeed. I could not get it to work? When I click the link to my RSS feed, even after waiting 10-15 minutes, it displays a blank page. Perhaps I need to wait longer. Nope, the developer emailed me back and he is looking into the problem.
The solution:
Facebook doesn’t check for valid RSS! Simple and gh3tt0:
$handle1 = fopen("http://www.benchodroff.com/feed/", "r");
$contents = stream_get_contents($handle1);
fclose($handle1);
echo $contents;
$handle2 = fopen("http://www.benchodroff.com/gallery/rss/gallery", "r");
$contents1 = stream_get_contents($handle2);
echo $contents1;
fclose($handle2);
?>
We are currently working on a solution to the 15 minute wait period before a bundle loads up the feeds. In our next release, you will be able to ping your bundle and have the feeds downloaded instantly. We are also revamping our interface. Please check back in a week or so, and we are always glad to hear feedback and constructive criticism!