Article:		RSS and AJAX: A Simple News Reader
Subject:		Excellent work,but..
Date:		2006-09-14 07:13:13
From:		Eki
Really nice work, innovative, client side function is a truly welcomed feature. Yet, the links in the feed do not eiher exist or work. The URL's of the items are there, but not as links; cannot understand why, because the essential service is now simply not there. Any help?

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• Excellent work,but..
  2006-09-15 07:00:38 sobes [Reply]
  
  

  
  Thanks for your feedback. Admittedly, a better way to do it would have been to place the links inside anchor (<a>) elements instead of <div> elements. This would make the links active. However it's easy to modify the code to do so. Here are the steps to make the channel link active:
  

  
  1) Change the <div id="chan_link"></div> to <a id="chan_link" href=""></a> in the HTML file
  
  2) Add the following line to the JavaScript code:
  
  document.getElementById("chan_link").href = RSS.link;
  
  Add this line just below the for loop that populated the channel elements (labelled /*B*/ in the code).
  

  
  To do the same to the item links, use a similar approach:
  

  
  1) Modify the HTML declared in the JavaScript code at the start of the showRSS(RSS) function. Specifically, substitute the "var startLink ..." line with the following two lines:
  
  
var startLink = "<a id='item_link' href='";

var endLink = "</a>";


  2) Replace the "item_html += (RSS.items[i].link..." line with the following:
  
  
item_html += (RSS.items[i].link == null) ? "" : startLink + RSS.items[i].link + "'>"+ RSS.items[i].link + endLink;

  

  
  The links themselves may not work, as I have used old sample RSS feeds that may be outdated. In conjunction with this reader, you will need to implement a server-side script that actually rebuilds the RSS files on a regular basis, thus keeping the content fresh and avoiding outdated links.
  

  
  I hope you found that helpful!
  
  Paul Sobocinski. (author)

  
  
  
  • Excellent work,but..
    2006-09-15 10:14:47 Eki [Reply]
    
    Thanks! Works.