I’ve got a custom PHP script that reads a google calendar and prints out an RSS feed. I’ve validated the feed (as txt) on a validator site. When I create an RSS layout, I get nothing. The logs says “Unable to get feed: Unable to detect feed format”
The layout options seem odd… I don’t get an option to select up/down or down/up format, only left/right or right/left. I’ve specified the URL as http://localhost/userscripts/google_cal_RSS.php. I’m running the latest docker install on WIndows, and the latest Xibo CMS. If I run a bash shell on a powershell and run the php script, I get the following output (which is what I used to validate the RSS output:
At a guess it will be problem with either the encoding or more likely with the fact that ticker is expecting the feed in the URL provided and you’re providing a script and ticker does not know what to do with it.
I’d suggest that you have something else to run the script and save the output to a file (powershell should be fine for that) of it and then in ticker provide the URL to that output file instead of the script.
Made some progress. First off, I had a line in my script that exited it it wasn’t being run in command line… Dumb. Took that out, so now I’m getting a feed within a browser. The ‘preview’ showed nothing… Changed the background color, turns out the default background color is black, and the default font color is black. So Now I can see output. Didn’t understand that the ‘effect’ was, finally chose ‘Markee Up’, and THERE IT IS. scrolling up. But now I’ll I’m getting are titles, no Description. When I put on a Google Chrome RSS reader extension on, I can see the title, and description. Why can’t I see it in the Xibo RSS view?
Once again, only the titles show up. An RSS reader shows the titles, and the description of each item. I MUST not be setting up something right, but I chose all the defaults. Once again, nothing in the preview can be seen, because the default background color is black, and the default text color is black. When I change the background color, I can see the rolling (I choose Marquee up) text, but no description. Running latest Docker and Xibo on a Windows 10 Pro system (both server and client).
Sigh, OK, I’m an idiot… I apparently was thinking that the 'Default’
Appearance tab (which I didn’t understand anyway) would include
description… But of course, it clear states that it does. I changed
that to Title And Description, and now its showing up as it should.
And in the Designer window, it shows up as a light gray background with
black letters. BUT in the ‘Preview’ view, it’s a black background, with
apparently black letters. And I don’t see any way to change the font
color. I’ll keep looking.
Oh, and another question. When I make a script change, I can’t figure out
how to have the ticker URL reloaded… Is there something I’m missing here
too? I end up deleting it and recreating it from scratch.
And while I’m at it (I’m SOOO close), the ordering in the RSS feed seems
scrambled. When I run the RSS php script in a shell, it prints it out in
date order. When I view it in my Google Chrome RSS reader extension, it
lists it out in date order. When it prints out within Xibo, its
scrambled. Now what am I doing wrong?
I assume the file output patch will remain unchanged in this case?
Or how does that work now?
In general ticker has its own update interval (set to 120min by default), you can adjust that by editing ticker widget on your layout.
Regarding order in the feed, it should take the items from the start or end of the feed (depending on setting in ticker widget), I’d expect them to be in correct order then, there is no feature implemented to show ‘random’ items from the feed in any case.
Not 100% sure I understand the ‘file output patch’ comment… The php
script works now. But I can run the script and pipe it into a file so that
its static… And here it is (below).
If you try it, you should see that the order is scrambled. I’ve got ‘first
item’ set, but they show up 6 7 5 4 2 3 1, clearly scrambled.
Help! The Ticker is still scrambling the output. The file I provided shows this. I understand there’s no feature to scramble output, but is it possible that its scrambling it anyway? Could it be related to the Dataset implementation, and somehow that’s connected?
I DID get ticker working, but now it’s somewhat unusable because its just goofy that calendar listings aren’t in order.
Change ‘Template’ from ‘Title only’ to ‘Title and Description’.
Change ‘Date sort’ from a Disable to an Enable. I find it odd anyway
that I had to turn date sort off so that my dates were in the correct
order… Except its probably to do with the multitude of ways a date can be
presented.
Also, I still can’t see a good way to change the color of the output text
to white. I’d think the default would be white, since the default
background is black. If I require a different font color I’m guessing I"d
have to somehow specify a font color in the RSS datastream.
Update: I selected ‘Override Template’ in the appearance tab, and all the defaults there just work. The text color is white, and the Title and Description both show up. So, one more problem solved.
Yes indeed. The template provides you a basis on which to customise the ticker to your needs. I don’t agree that we should change the default template, since “Title Only” works well for things like news RSS feeds, which is the original purpose of the module.
The date sort behaviour is what you want. The items in the feed are ordered by date by default. The problem here is your feed doesn’t contain any dates. The description field are dates, but that isn’t what the software is looking at. RSS feeds have a field for each item (pubDate) and that is what it is sorted on. Since yours doesn’t have that field, then they’re being sorted by whatever the library uses as a second choice. Disabling the sort shows you feed order.
<item>
<title><![CDATA[Hurricane Ophelia: Warnings as storm heads to UK]]></title>
<description><![CDATA[Winds of up to 80mph are expected as the remnants of Hurricane Ophelia approach the UK.]]></description>
<link>http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-41627442</link>
<guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-41627442</guid>
<pubDate>Mon, 16 Oct 2017 06:22:10 GMT</pubDate>
<media:thumbnail width="2048" height="1152" url="http://c.files.bbci.co.uk/6574/production/_98327952_mediaitem98327951.jpg"/>
</item>