xml.php creation of Media RSS feed from Gallery2 albums

Hi All!

I've spent the last two days trying to get my gallery2 to output Media RSS feeds that work with PicLens (http://www.piclens.com/enable), and I think only one thing stands between me and a working implementation.

I've been modifying the xml.php file that is part of the XML mini slideshow located at http://www.flashyourweb.com/dokuwiki/doku.php?id=xmlmini, and with my limited knowledge I've been able to get it to output the XML file needed, except the <link> parameter in each <item> is formed with the form /gallery2/main.php?g2_itemId=###, while the links assigned to the thumbnails on my album pages have the rewritten format of /gallery2/v/albumpath/filename.jpg.html

I'm including my modified xml.php file at the bottom of this message with the hopes that someone can suggest a clean way to get the photo page links into the <link> parameter. I think the part that I need to figure out how to change lies in the function getLink() or something with the urlGenerator.

If anyone else wants to try this, in your local theme.tpl file, beneath this line

   {if $theme.pageType == 'album' || $theme.pageType == 'photo'}
    <meta name="keywords" content="{$theme.item.keywords}" />
    <meta name="description" content="{$theme.item.description|markup:strip}" />
    {/if}

add this line

 {if $theme.pageType == 'album'}
    <link rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml" title="MediaRSS:{$theme.item.title}"
        href="/gallery2/xml.php?g2_itemId={$theme.item.id}" />
    {/if}

which will declare the RSS feed on each album page.

Thanks!!
-Nate

Ok, the above works for PicLens in Safari, but not in the FireFox plugin on WinXP. The developers of PicLens are looking into it and suggested that they may have a bug that they need to fix in PicLens Firefox. I'll post back when i hear what they find out.

-Nate

If you look at natec's original post, you'll see the following:
href="/gallery2/xml.php?g2_itemId={$theme.item.id}"

So if you use that href as-is, it would appear that you should be placing xml.php in the root of your gallery2 installation. If you put it elsewhere, you'd need to change that href accordingly.

HTH,

Conor
Christchurch, NZ

GLoSS: Gallery2 Local Screen Saver & Desktop Changer

Nate,

One thing I notice in the XML from your xml.php (although it may not be significant), is that when I run it on my gallery, the URLs for the media:content and media:thumbnail tags are fully qualified. e.g. on my gallery, one example is http://gallery.ildica.com/d/8289-2/IMG_1255.jpg?g2_GALLERY... whereas the img src generated on my gallery album page is simply /d/8289-2/IMG_1255.jpg

I'm not sure how PicLens does it's matching, but it could be the differences are significant?

I haven't looked into the Gallery code enough (or understand enough PHP anyway) to know if there's an easier way to get the shortened URL so that it matches.

Thoughts?

Conor
Christchurch, NZ

GLoSS: Gallery2 Local Screen Saver & Desktop Changer

Hi Nate,

Sorry, haven't tried Safari against my site. If I get time, I might install it on a virtual machine and see if it flies.

I was just looking at the example feeds on the PicLens site and comparing them to the feed from my site and the thumbnail links on the album pages. The examples on the PicLens site match exactly (e.g. the media:content tag matches exactly the thumbnail url on the album page), whereas the ones generated by the xml.php on my site don't. For a start they have the GALLERYSID appended.

I was simply wondering if this might be significant in how PicLens does it's matching.

Cheers,

Conor
Christchurch, NZ

GLoSS: Gallery2 Local Screen Saver & Desktop Changer

Hey there,

Yeah, got URLRewrite on.

Here's one of the items from my xml.php (which I've tried tweaking a bit already):

        <item>
            <title>The Ragged Range across the Rakaia</title>
            <id>8287</id>
            <link>/v/DoubleHill/IMG_1255.jpg.html</link>
            <media:content url="/d/8287-1/IMG_1255.jpg?g2_GALLERYSID=f911f9105e6e4e6a78a713e6d40005f0" />
            <media:thumbnail url="/d/8289-2/IMG_1255.jpg?g2_GALLERYSID=f911f9105e6e4e6a78a713e6d40005f0" />

            <width>1279</width>
            <height>853</height>
            <mime>image/jpeg</mime>
            <description><![CDATA[<a href="/v/DoubleHill/IMG_1255.jpg.html"><img border="0" src="/d/8289-2/IMG_1255.jpg?g2_GALLERYSID=f911f9105e6e4e6a78a713e6d40005f0" width="150" height="100"/></a><br/>The Ragged Range across the Rakaia]]></description>
            <guid isPermaLink="false">/v/DoubleHill/IMG_1255.jpg.html</guid>
            <pubDate>Sun, 12 Aug 2007 20:42:56 -0400</pubDate>

        </item>

And here's the corresponding bit from my album page:

<a onmouseover="pic8287.className='ImageFrame_image giThumbnail opacity6'" onmouseout="pic8287.className='ImageFrame_image giThumbnail opacity10'" 
href="/v/DoubleHill/IMG_1255.jpg.html?g2_enterAlbum=0">
<img src="/d/8289-2/IMG_1255.jpg" width="150" height="100" id="IFid1" class="ImageFrame_image giThumbnail opacity10" name="pic8287" alt="The Ragged Range across the Rakaia" longdesc=""/></a>

What I was comparing it with was the sample XML from the Firefox section on the PicLens site (http://www.piclens.com/firefox/photos.xml):

<item>
	<title>Reine-Among-Mountains.jpg</title>
	<link>http://www.piclens.com/firefox/images/Reine-Among-Mountains.jpg</link>
		<media:thumbnail url="thumbs/Reine-Among-Mountains_thumb.jpg" />
		<media:content url="images/Reine-Among-Mountains.jpg" type="image/jpeg" />
</item>

which has relative urls.

Soooo, I've still got problems with the GALLERYSID, etc.

I haven't tried contacting PicLens directly, but I will do so.

Thanks for the conversation, it would be really nice to get this working. ;-)

Conor
Christchurch, NZ

GLoSS: Gallery2 Local Screen Saver & Desktop Changer

Is there any update on this? I just discovered PicLens and would love to implement it on my Gallery2 site, but unfortunately 95% of the users are on Windows.

Since I had the above conversation with Nate, I've also been in touch with the PicLens support guys.

Sadly, while they were interested in beta feedback on the PicLens Publisher tool they're currently developing, they don't seem at all interested in helping me understand why I can't get PicLens going against my Gallery using Firefox.

In terms of where to put the entry in your theme.tpl, just find the <head> tag in your theme.tpl and put it somewhere appropriate close under that. I assume you've made a copy of your theme.tpl file in a "local" subfolder.

If you get it going, I'd love to hear about it, but I've put it on the back burner myself for now.

Cheers,

Conor
Christchurch, NZ

GLoSS: Gallery2 Local Screen Saver & Desktop Changer

I may have some good news for you guys, it is working on my site.

I included the following line:

<link rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml" title="MediaRSS:{$theme.item.title}"
        href="/photos/xml.php?g2_itemId={$theme.item.id}" />

After the following lines in the theme.tpl file:

{if $theme.pageType == 'album'}
    {g->theme include="album.tpl"}

I also had to edit the xml.php file as my folder is called photos and not gallery2. That's all I did though and it works great. I wonder if PicLens has corrected the problem?

Okay, so check this out. It functions on my work computer, but NOT on my home computer!!

Gah! Both are windows, both are on the same version of Firefox. I'm going to play around with it to see what is different. I will probably start by installing all the plug-ins on my home computer that I have at work. Then I will try removing them until I find the magic plug-in.

My photo site is not publicly available, but since I am all about sharing, I'll make one album publicly available for a day or two: http://www.theharwoodfamily.net/photos/main.php?g2_itemId=379

I'll let you know when I get it working on my home PC.

Disregard the last. I uninstalled Yoono and it is still working fine. I don't know why it wasn't working at first.

Which version of Firefox are you using? I'm on 2.0.0.7, with Piclens 1.5.11.

Cheers,

Conor
Christchurch, NZ

GLoSS: Gallery2 Local Screen Saver & Desktop Changer

It worked for me (mostly) on the harwoodfamily site. Loaded very slow. about 20 seconds for initial view.
I'm in the process of changing all of my flash apps over to Media RSS, so I will have a release of a true Media RSS xml.php probably later tonight which supports keyword albums, tag albums, all dynamic albums...
The new rss module for G2 has Media RSS setting, but it does not include most of the necessary tags.

-s
FlashYourWeb and Your Gallery

thanks suprsidr! I just swapped in your new xml.php file for my old modified one, and PicLens worked in Safari just as it had before without any changes needed! I don't have any dynamic albums in my website, so I haven't tested that feature, nor have I tested Windows Firefox PicLens yet.

-natec

Hi,

I finally got round to trying your latest mediaRSS posted above, Suprsidr.

The script seems to be outputting nothing.

I changed the embedding URIs on line 30 as appropriate, and it seems to produce no output (e.g. http://gallery.ildica.com/mediaRss.php?g2_itemID=9206)

Any further thoughts before I sadly give up trying to get PicLens working in FF?

Many thanks,

Conor
Christchurch, NZ

GLoSS: Gallery2 Local Screen Saver & Desktop Changer

I've tried this new version with the same lack of success on my gallery.

It seems to be failing somewhere in the getAlbumList method. It just silently bails out, so the output from the php script is
<?xml version=\"1.0\" encoding=\"UTF-8\" ?>

I put a few echos in to see how far it got, and it gets as far as line 304 or thereabouts, and then nothing further:
foreach ($Albums as $Albums){

It might be significant, but I'm still runing G2.1, not G2.2:

---

Gallery version = 2.1.2 core 1.1.0.2
PHP version = 5.2.2 cgi-fcgi
Webserver = Apache/1.3.37 (Unix) mod_psoft_traffic/0.1 Vortech_PHP/0.1.0-p0 FrontPage/5.0.2.2623 mod_throttle/3.1.2 mod_ssl/2.8.28 OpenSSL/0.9.7e-p1
Database = mysql 4.0.26, lock.system=flock
Toolkits = Exif, Gd, NetPBM, ImageMagick
Acceleration = partial/21600, partial/900
Operating system = FreeBSD unix11.hsphere.cc 6.1-RELEASE-p12 FreeBSD 6.1-RELEASE-p12 #0: Thu Feb 1 16:50:12 EST 2007

:/usr/obj/usr/src/sys/WEB6 i386
Default theme = PGtheme
Locale = en_GB
Browser = Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 7.0; Windows NT 5.1; .NET CLR 1.1.4322; InfoPath.1; .NET CLR 2.0.50727; .NET CLR 3.0.04506.30)

---

Conor
Christchurch, NZ

GLoSS: Gallery2 Local Screen Saver & Desktop Changer

Thanks for looking into it further.

Better, in that I at least get something now. However, it's not what we were hoping for. ;-)

Error loading Entity:Error (ERROR_BAD_PARAMETER)

    * in modules/core/classes/helpers/GalleryEntityHelper_simple.class at line 50 (GalleryCoreApi::error)
    * in modules/core/classes/GalleryCoreApi.class at line 2382 (GalleryEntityHelper_simple::loadEntitiesById)
    * in mediaRss.php at line 328 (GalleryCoreApi::loadEntitiesById)
    * in mediaRss.php at line 654
    * in mediaRss.php at line 661

Conor
Christchurch, NZ

GLoSS: Gallery2 Local Screen Saver & Desktop Changer

I got it working on Win XP and FireFox 2.0.0.9 with PicLens 1.5.15, using the first media rss posted by natec on Gallery version 2.2.1 core 1.2.0.1. Even the URL-rewriting works well!

Using the media rss posted by supersidr, I got problems with the GALLERYSID.

sample url?

-s
FlashYourWeb and Your Gallery with The E2 XML Media Player for Gallery2

This was user error. The feed is working fine.

Just to note, it didn't seem to work in IE6. But returns the results fine in IE7

Thanks

Banta

Perhaps someone can help if they know what version of Gallery/PicLens/Safari/FF you're using. It seems like getting this working is rather hit/miss between different versions, and an update in any of the components can cause another to break. I'm still using the xml.php posted in this thread on 10/17, and it still works for me in non-3.0 Safari. Haven't tried in Firefox recently.

First of all I want to thank everybody on this thread Finally I got this working with Windows XP and Firefox

After trying almost every combo in these threads the thing that finally worked for me was Natec's first xml.php file and Malandro95's edit of the theme.tpl.

theme.tpl (malandro95's way)
find the following:

then add the following:

(in my case I removed /gallery2/)

xml.php (from natec's first post)
I had to remove the /gallery2/ reference since I have every gallery in it's own subdomain.
(line 5)

became =>

multi-site install:
Since I'm using multisite install I have the xml.php in my base gallery2 directory (/usr/share/gallery2/xml.php).
In each gallery I created a seperate xml.php which refers to the base install.
xml.php (in every gallery)

Ok I am getting closer, I have the 3d wall working when I click the firefox plugin icon in the toolbar but I can not get the little play icon to appear on the actual images.

I think this is because the output from the rss converts & signes to &amp; which does not relate back to the actual gallery image href.

Does anyone know how in xml.php I can stop this extra &amp; appearing?

====================
Ok I bodged the xml.php file to do what I needed if you have the piclens firefox plugin installed
go to http://www.0-21.co.uk/index.php/Gallery/?g2_itemId=14

and click teh lpay icon that appears on the thumbnail when you mouseover.

these are old pics and are not set to the right size for best impact

Hi Midbar-

Can you attach a text file with your changes? I have seen weird symbols in my automatically generated RSS feed, and haven't investigated to find out if it's because there was a mismatch between the listed text-encoding type, and the way my webserver was actually serving the file. Does that have something to do with it?

-natec

Hi Totoro, Yes it does work but only because I have altered the xml.php file to get rid of my issue.
I will zip up my file and post a download link but it's a hack, (it really should work as is)

Natec
Do you think my problems could be related to the fact that my gallery is embedded in joomla?

my xml output is

note the &amp; in the link and guid

should be

I ended up hard coding the link and guid to avoid this extra &amp; but is I can figure out what is putting it there the xml.php file provided by natec would work 'out the box'

Any help would be appreciated!

Ok, I have used the orignal natec xml.php file and the changes that was made into the theme.tpl

Not working here for me.
----
Gallery version = 2.2.3 core 1.2.0.5
PHP version = 4.4.4 cgi
Webserver = Apache/1.3.37 (Unix) mod_auth_passthrough/1.8 mod_log_bytes/1.2 mod_bwlimited/1.4 FrontPage/5.0.2.2635.SR1.2 mod_ssl/2.8.28 OpenSSL/0.9.7a PHP-CGI/0.1b
Database = mysqlt