RSS feed with sorting by state and news type but need to display no loop message

aguivera · May 13, 2016, 1:24am

Hi everyone. I’m relatively new to PHP and am working on this page http://www.aguivera.com/form.php.
I need to ingest RSS for certain weather warnings and I’ve been able to do it and sort by a specific type of warning. What I’m trying to do now is show a message when there is no data that matches the specific weather warning to appear when someone selects their state.

Currently I do get a message but it keeps looping the amount of times set in my RSS $limit.

This is my code. I know it’s not pretty but I’m more interested in trying to get this to work.
Any guidance or direction would be greatly associated.

my code:

[php]

--Select State-- Alabama Alaska AR <?php $state = new DOMDocument(); if(isset($_POST["state"])){ $state->load($_POST["state"]); $feed = array(); foreach ($state->getElementsByTagName('entry') as $node) { $item = array ( 'title' => $node->getElementsByTagName('title')->item(0)->nodeValue, 'desc' => $node->getElementsByTagName('summary')->item(0)->nodeValue, 'link' => $node->getElementsByTagName('id')->item(0)->nodeValue, 'date' => $node->getElementsByTagName('published')->item(0)->nodeValue, 'type' => $node->getElementsByTagName('event')->item(0)->nodeValue, ); array_push($feed, $item);} $limit =10; for($x=0;$x<$limit;$x++) { $title = str_replace(' & ', ' & ', $feed[$x]['title']); $link = $feed[$x]['link']; $description = $feed[$x]['desc']; $category = $feed[$x]['type']; $date = date('l F d, Y', strtotime($feed[$x]['date'])); if($category == 'Flood Warning') { echo '

'.$title.'
'; echo 'Posted on '.$date.'

'; echo '

'.$description.'

'; echo '

Type of event: '.$category.'

'; } else { echo "no warning"; } } } ?>

[/php]

astonecipher · May 13, 2016, 2:37am

You are looping regardless of the situation:
[php]
foreach( $feed as $key => $val ){
echo “

”;

print_r( $val );

echo “

”;
}[/php]

aguivera · May 13, 2016, 3:05pm

How would I change? Would changing that stop the code from listing all messages?

astonecipher · May 13, 2016, 3:47pm

How many messages do you want displayed? You can filter the result set.

aguivera · May 13, 2016, 4:14pm

There could be any number of messages, so it could be as little as 5 but potentially 15-20. If there is no result for my set filters then a message saying there is nothing should only appear once. Does that make sense?

astonecipher · May 13, 2016, 4:19pm

I can understand that, but why this:
[php]if($category == ‘Flood Warning’)[/php]

Will different types of messages display differently?

aguivera · May 13, 2016, 4:57pm

That defines the one type of messages I want displayed. I only need flood warning messages since the RSS feed contains all sorts of other weather related warnings.

If a flood warning message doesn’t exist for a specific user selected state then I want a single message that says “there are no warning messages for your state”.

astonecipher · May 13, 2016, 6:10pm

Later this evening I will have modified code. The replacement code I had in length isn’t available now. But you want to move the array_push to within you category check, if you only want one type of alert.

aguivera · May 13, 2016, 6:11pm

That would be incredible, I’d definitely appreciate it and will donate for your time.

Thank you so much.

R

astonecipher · May 13, 2016, 10:08pm

Testable:

[php]
if ( $_SERVER[‘REQUEST_METHOD’] == ‘POST’){
define(‘DISPLAY_LIMIT’, 5); // this is the variable to change the displayed limit
$count = 0;
$state = new DOMDocument();

$state->load($_POST["state"]);

$feed = array();

foreach ($state->getElementsByTagName('entry') as $node) {
    $item = array(
        'title' => $node->getElementsByTagName('title')->item(0)->nodeValue,
        'desc' => $node->getElementsByTagName('summary')->item(0)->nodeValue,
        'link' => $node->getElementsByTagName('id')->item(0)->nodeValue,
        'date' => $node->getElementsByTagName('published')->item(0)->nodeValue,
        'type' => $node->getElementsByTagName('event')->item(0)->nodeValue
    );
    if ( strpos($item['title'], 'Flood Warning') != -1) {
        array_push($feed, $item);
        $count++;
        if( $count == DISPLAY_LIMIT){
            break;
        }
    } 
}

foreach ($feed as $key => $val) {
    $title = str_replace(' & ', ' &amp; ', $val['title']);
    $link = $val['link'];
    $description = $val['desc'];
    $category = $val['type'];
    $date = date('l F d, Y', strtotime($val['date']));
    echo "<h2>{$val['title']}</h2>";
    echo "<p><strong><a href='$link' title='$title'>$title</a></strong><br />";
    echo "<small><em>Posted on $date</em></small></p>";
    echo "<p>$description</p>";
}

}

[/php]