[Solved] CGFeedMaker Issue with News Module

[ColonelBlimp]

Using: cmsms 2.1, php 5.5.12, apache 2.4.9, CGExtensions 1.50, CGFeedMaker 1.0.20

Defaults:
1. News feed template (except the <atom .. /> line is commented out for now as pretty_urls are not currently enabled).
2. Default 'News Summary Sample' template (which is the default for summary news).

The Issue:
I can access the feed, but no news gets onto the feed. I've tried adding new news items; changing the post date; switching on/off expiry... nothing seems enable me to get a news item summary into the feed.
Hard coding the template works fine. So, it seems that the following line from the template is not able to access news items:

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{News assign='junk' detailpage=$feed.pageid}

as nothing inside the:

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{if isset($items)}
...
{/if}

is executed.
Can anyone point me in the direction of what I am doing wrong?

Many thanks.

[ColonelBlimp]

Results of further testing:

Test 1:

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{News assign='junk'}

Still no joy...
Test 2:

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{News}

Now the 'default' news summary template is rendered in the xml feed file. It seems that variables from the News Module are not being propagated to the feed template?

I'm not sure if this is a bug or something I'm doing wrong. I've tried this out on two separate installs of cmsms 2.1 - same results. I have not tested previous versions of cmsms.

My fall-back position seems to be to create a News::Summary template with the appropriate rss markup?

[Rolf]

It doesnt work because of Smarty scope.
Create summary template like described here http://www.cmscanbesimple.org/blog/crea ... t-a-module and call it in CGFeedmaker template

[ColonelBlimp]

Thank you for replying so quickly.

Create summary template like described here http://www.cmscanbesimple.org/blog/crea ... t-a-module and call it in CGFeedmaker template

This is what I have done (my fall-back position) and it works just fine - indeed, it seems more logical to have the RSS template listed along with all the other templates.

It doesnt work because of Smarty scope.

The documentation states that it should work... so is this a bug that should be reported?

Thanks again.

[ColonelBlimp]

A Working Solution:

Create a Design template of the type News::Summary as follows:

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{if isset($items)}
{foreach $items as $entry}
<item>
  <title>{$entry->title|cms_html_entity_decode}</title>
{capture assign='description'}{if isset($entry->summary)}{$entry->summary}{else}{$entry->content}{/if}{/capture}
  <description>{$description|trim|strip_tags|summarize:80}</description>
  <pubDate>{$entry->postdate|rfc_date}</pubDate>
  <guid>{$entry->moreurl}</guid>
</item>
{/foreach}
{/if}

Modify the news template in CGFeedMaker as follows:

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{* original rss feed template *}
<?xml version="1.0"?>
<rss version="2.0" xmlns:atom="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom">
  <channel>
  {* note: if you have not configured pretty urls or mod rewrite, the next line may fail when trying to validate the feed *}
  <atom:link href="{$feed_url}" rel="self" type="application/rss+xml" />
    <title>{$feed.title|cms_escape}</title>
    {if isset($feed.link) && !empty($feed.link)}<link>{$feed.link}</link>{/if}
    {if isset($feed.description) && !empty($feed.description)}<description>{$feed.description}</description>{/if}
    {if isset($feed.copyright) && !empty($feed.copyright)}<copyright>{$feed.copyright}</copyright>{/if}
    {if isset($generator)}<generator>{$generator}</generator>{/if}
    {if isset($feed.managing_editor) && !empty($feed.managing_editor)}<managingEditor>{$feed.managing_editor}</managingEditor>{/if}
    {if isset($admin_email)}<webMaster>{$admin_email} ({$admin_user->firstname} {$admin_user->lastname})</webMaster>{/if}
    {if isset($feed.image) && !empty($feed.image)}
      <image>
	{if isset($feed.description) && !empty($feed.description)}<description>{$feed.description}</description>{/if}
        {if isset($feed.link) && !empty($feed.link)}<link>{$feed.link}</link>{/if}
        <title>{$feed.title}</title>
        <url>{$file_location}/{$feed.image}</url>
      </image>
    {/if}

    {* an example of how to create a feed from a call to the news module *}
    {* you can use any smarty variable that is available in the news summary template *}
    {* you can substitute this logic with output from any module that supports a summary
       view, or possibly get artistic and mix output from different modules *}
    {News summarytemplate='your_template_name'}
  </channel>
</rss>

And you should be good to go.
DON'T FORGET: you will need pretty_urls enabled for the <atom:link .../> to work!