RSS Item Limits

[elhaix]

I'm reading an RSS feed via:

    protected void Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e)
    {
        recentPosts.DataSource = GetRSSFeed("[URL unfurl="true"]http://news.google.com/news?hl=en&ned=us&ie=UTF-8&q=Living+room+entertainment+furniture&output=rss");[/URL]
        recentPosts.DataBind();

        //Response.Write(GetRSSFeed("[URL unfurl="true"]http://www.aspmessageboard.com/scripts/rss.xml"));[/URL]
    }

    protected DataTable GetRSSFeed(string strURL)
    {
        // get the XML data
        XmlTextReader reader = new XmlTextReader(strURL);
           
        // return a new DataSet
        DataSet ds = new DataSet();
        ds.ReadXml(reader);
        return ds.Tables[3];
    }

This works great, and I can see all the feed items in my DG. However, I want to limit the number of <items> (ie. to three rows) - and not use DG paging. I thought about just setting paging=true, set the # to 3 and hiding, through CSS, the paging field (display: none), but that's ugly.

So I figured I'd iterate through the reader, create a new XmlTextWriter, and omit any <item></item>'s who's count is > my max item count - ie. 3.

Can someone lend a hand on this one please, or recommend a better way to do this?

Thanks!

 

[elhaix]

Solution found.

To recap: Reading an RSS feed, data-binding to a DataGrid/other data control, and wanting to limit the number of RSS items to be displayed.

The solution here was to:
1) create a DataView of the DataSet.
2) create a new DataTable, where we will copy desired DataView rows to
3) iterate through the DV, copy rows until row-count is reached

    const string RSS_FEED = "[URL unfurl="true"]http://news.google.com/news?hl=en&ned=us&ie=UTF-8&q=Living+room+entertainment+furniture&output=rss";[/URL]
    const int MAX_RSS_ROWS = 2;

    protected void Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e)
    {
        recentPosts.DataSource = GetRSSFeed(RSS_FEED);
        recentPosts.DataBind();
    }



    protected DataTable GetRSSFeed(string strURL)
    {
        XmlTextReader reader = new XmlTextReader(strURL);

        DataSet ds = new DataSet();
        ds.ReadXml(reader);         // populate dataset
        
        // populate dv so we can filter out extra <item> rows
        DataView dv = new DataView(ds.Tables[3]);
        DataTable outputTable = dv.Table.Clone();
        
        // iterate through the dv rows, copy them to the outputTable until max rows is reached
        for (int x = 0; x < MAX_RSS_ROWS; x++)
        {
            outputTable.ImportRow(dv.Table.Rows[x]);
        }

        return outputTable;
    }

Incidentally, if you want to grab the entire code from an HTML page:

    /// <summary>
    /// Reads XML from a given URL
    /// </summary>
    /// <param name="sourceFile"></param>
    /// <returns></returns>
    protected object getXML(string sourceFile)
    {
        System.Net.WebRequest myRequest = System.Net.WebRequest.Create(sourceFile);
        System.Net.WebResponse myResponse = myRequest.GetResponse();
        System.Xml.XmlTextReader myReader = new System.Xml.XmlTextReader(myResponse.GetResponseStream());
        System.Xml.XmlDocument doc = new System.Xml.XmlDocument();
        doc.Load(myReader);
        return (doc);
    }

I hope this solution can help you guys.