CakePHP - Using the RSS Helper without RequestHandler Component - cakephp

Question

I have set up the RSS Helper (with CakePHP 1.3.4) and all is working - I can access my feeds by /news/feed.rss - as exampled at http://book.cakephp.org/view/1461/Creating-an-RSS-feed-with-the-RssHelper
But I want to be able to do this conditionally, in sudo, something like:
if (!empty($var)) {
switch ($var) {
case one :
$xml = $this->method->find('$var conditions...');
... use RSS Helper to serve results as XML.
case two :
$xml = $this->method->find('other $var conditions...');
... use RSS Helper to serve results as XML.
}
}
Can I use the RSS Helper in this circumstance? What calls/syntax do I use?

Answer 1

There are 2 ways to do this.
Basically you can pass a variable like this:
http://yourserver.com/news/feed.rss?recent=20
and then in the controller you can access this variable with
$this->params['url']['recent']; //20
Or you can add a line in your Router file like this:
Router::connect('/feed-:recent/*', array('plugin'=>false, 'controller' => 'news', 'action' => 'feed'), array('recent'=>'[0-9]+'));
This way your url will look like:
http://yourserver.com/news/feed-20.rss
and finally I believe that url like this will work as well:
http://yourserver.com/news/feed.rss/recent:20

Answer 2

You can pass params to the function the same as any other controller call.
IE
public function rss( $limit = 20, $topic = null ){
if( !$topic ){
$xml = $this->Article->find( 'all', array( 'limit' => $limit ));
...
} else {
$xml = $this->Article->find( 'all', array( 'limit' => $limit, 'conditions' => array( 'Article.topic' => $topic )));
}
...
}
}
?>
Then you can access the rss feed with: http://domain/articles/rss.rss
If you need to pass parameters: http://domain/articles/rss/100.rss (fetch all with 100 results)
Or like this: http://domain/articles/rss/10/obama.rss (fetch all with the topic "obama" and return 10 items.

Answer 3

The RequestHandler allows you to use a url like /posts/index.rss and it automatically loads the RSS Helper and sends the output to /views/posts/rss/index.ctp, and uses layout at /views/layouts/rss/default.ctp.
But if you want to use the RSS Helper on it's own you need to:
1) include it the controller
var $helpers = array('Rss');
2) in your controller action you need to specify where the output goes, so
$this->render('/posts/rss/index','/rss/default');
In this case I also specified which layout to use in the 2nd argument. The first arg - the index.ctp file location is relative to your views/ directory. The second arg - the layout is relative to your views/layouts/ directory.
So I have a method in my posts_controller that I use to identify which feed is wanted (through a passed var) and subsequently finds the posts and sends them to the correct views and layouts:
function rss(){
if (!empty($this->params['pass'])){
$ops=array(
'conditions'=>'where feedname_id=' . $this->params['pass'][0],
'order' => 'Post.created DESC',
'limit' => 10
);
$this->set('posts', $this->Post->find('all',$ops));
$this->render('/posts/rss/index','/rss/default');
} else {
$this->redirect(array('controller'=>'feednames','action'=>'index'));
}
}
There might be better ways to code this - if so please let me know.