I needed a simple, easy to work with, asyncronous safe RSS parser. I tried TclRSS [L1 ], but it had heavy requirements, and I never actually figured out the correct combination of dependencies and their versions needed to make it work. I gave up on that and started writing my own RSS parser, using the subset of the TclRSS API that I had already written a program to. I found TAX: A Tiny API for XML (make sure you use the version at the bottom of the page, I just made that into a package and called it "tax 0.1") a small, good-enough Tcl XML parser and wrote an RSS parser from example RSS 2.0 feeds, and not from the specification (I was in a hurry). It works with my limited testing (digg.com, sourceforge, and cnn), but probably doesn't work for anything that is not exactly RSS 2.0 and pretty close to one of my examples.
#! /usr/bin/env tclsh
package require tax
namespace eval rss {
namespace eval channels {
}
namespace eval items {
}
}
proc rss::__replace_entities {text} {
return [string map [list ">" ">" "<" "<" "&" "&"] $text]
}
proc rss::__strip_html {text} {
return [regsub -all -- {<[^>]*>} $text ""]
}
proc rss::__tax_add_to_object {obj tag isClose isSelfClosing properties body} {
upvar #0 $obj rssobj
set channelid [namespace tail $obj]
set tag [string tolower [string trim $tag]]
if {$tag == "docstart"} {
set rssobj(parent) [list]
namespace eval ::rss::items::$channelid {}
}
if {$tag == "docstart" || $tag == "rss"} {
return
}
if {[string index $tag 0] == "?"} {
return
}
if {$isClose && !$isSelfClosing} {
if {$tag == "item"} {
# We close tag items twice, because we add a fake open with the tag id
set rssobj(parent) [lrange $rssobj(parent) 0 end-1]
}
set rssobj(parent) [lrange $rssobj(parent) 0 end-1]
return
}
lappend rssobj(parent) $tag
set parent [lindex $rssobj(parent) end-1]
switch -- $tag {
"item" {
if {$parent == "channel"} {
set lastusedid [namespace tail [lindex [lsort -dictionary -decreasing [info procs ::rss::items::${channelid}::*]] 0]]
if {$lastusedid == ""} {
set lastusedid 0
}
set id "::rss::items::${channelid}::[expr $lastusedid + 1]"
proc $id [list command [list obj $obj] [list id $id]] {
upvar #0 $obj rssobj
switch -- [string tolower $command] {
"title" {
set idx [list $id title]
}
"link" {
set idx [list $id link]
}
"description" {
set idx [list $id description]
}
"date" {
set idx [list $id pubdate]
}
}
if {![info exists idx]} {
return ""
}
if {![info exists rssobj($idx)]} {
return ""
}
return $rssobj($idx)
}
lappend rssobj(items) $id
lappend rssobj(parent) $id
}
}
"title" {
set rssobj([list $parent title]) [__strip_html [__replace_entities $body]]
}
"link" {
set rssobj([list $parent link]) [__replace_entities $body]
}
"description" {
set rssobj([list $parent description]) [__strip_html [__replace_entities $body]]
}
"pubdate" {
catch {
set body [clock scan $body]
}
set rssobj([list $parent pubdate]) $body
}
}
if {$isClose} {
# For self-closing tags
if {$tag == "item"} {
# We close tag items twice, because we add a fake open with the tag id
set rssobj(parent) [lrange $rssobj(parent) 0 end-1]
}
set rssobj(parent) [lrange $rssobj(parent) 0 end-1]
}
return
}
# Return ID
proc rss::parse {data} {
set lastusedid [namespace tail [lindex [lsort -dictionary -decreasing [info vars ::rss::channels::*]] 0]]
if {$lastusedid == ""} {
set lastusedid 0
}
set id "::rss::channels::[expr $lastusedid + 1]"
upvar #0 $id rssobj
tax::parse [list ::rss::__tax_add_to_object $id] $data
proc $id [list command [list obj $id]] {
upvar #0 $obj rssobj
switch -- $command {
"items" {
set idx items
}
"description" {
set idx [list channel description]
}
"link" {
set idx [list channel link]
}
}
if {![info exists idx]} {
return ""
}
if {![info exists rssobj($idx)]} {
return ""
}
return $rssobj($idx)
}
return $id
}
proc rss::cleanup {id} {
if {[string match "::rss::channels::*" $id]} {
set channelid [namespace tail $id]
foreach proc [info procs ::rss::items::${channelid}::*] {
rename $proc ""
}
unset -nocomplain $id
}
return 1
}
package provide rss 0.1You'll notice that it is slightly inconsisent towards the middle.. I should have used a namespace under ::rss for both channels and items, but I didn't realize this until I didn't feel like changing it. Feel free to edit the above, or use it in your own code.