Quality XML output

you are going to need a custom module or php page for this. the quick and dirty approach has you querying the node, term_data and term_node tables in order to get all nodes that are in the vocab that you care about. once you have that query returning the proper nodes, then send the result to node_feed() and you have your XML.

I've had the same kind of need for a while now, to be able to manage content on flash or multi-purpose sites, and I've kind of settled on drupal as my CMS of choice because I love the ways you can organize information (not to mention it can be set up to be dummy, er, client-proof with it's permissions and stuff)

But I was having the same problem, getting the content out of the cms and into the flash site. I've had varying degrees of success with different methods, but I haven't yet settled on a solution that I think is ideal. So take this for what it's worth, maybe it'll help you come up with something that works for you.

First method: since it's all stored in a mysql DB, just look at the table structure and write custom PHP scripts to pull data out into the flash front end. The plus side of this is you get XML that formatted EXACTLY how you need it for that application. For the first couple of sites, I was coding it all in php... but then I started using a templating system called tinybutstrong (www.tinybutstrong.com), which makes it real easy to set up a basic XML schema, and then basically pass it to about a 5 line php script that fills the template with the result of a SQL query. Because of drupals' table structure, this caused me to get REAL good at complex SQL queries REAL quick.

I use this method on my website, which has a flash and an html front end, you can see it in action at www.1066propaganda.com

This works pretty well for sites that only have one content administrator, but it pretty much breaks any of the approval queue features and you end up sometimes having to do a lot of work that drupal could've already done for you (complex taxonomies are pretty much out of the question for a coder of my limited skill level). Also, because the XML was so customizable, I never really settled on a reusable standard, because I could just code it a little differently if I had a different need. This ended up ultimately adding to my development time on each project, and I began to get a little frustrated with this method.

New Method I really wanted to be able to take advantage of drupals content serving abilities, plus I wanted to be able to make some admin features available to the content administrators. So I started taking a look at how modules were set up and how difficult it would be to write new ones that served my needs. After playing around with trying to integrate a templated solution into a module (good idea, but problematic), I settled on just writing a couple of functions that output the standard drupal objects as XML files. It worked pretty well, and I was able to set up some permissions and simple admin stuff (restrict types of nodes to serve, restrict taxonomies, etc). This was surprisingly easy once i realized that drupal already constructs all it's navigation and content as objects before rendering them as HTML. The only problem was, when I made it generic enough to allow for variable node types, the XML files were HUGE and filled mostly with stuff that was completely irrelevant to my applications. That's maybe not such a problem with small datasets, but with flash being what it is, I wanted to keep the xml as lean as possible . What I ended up coming up with was placing an array of node properties NOT to include in an include file, so you could optimize the output somewhat, but still allow the nodes to define their xml to a certian extent.

I'm actually just now starting development on a site that uses that module, but so far it seems like it's going to work like a dream for flash integration. I was thinking about submitting it as a contribution, but i wasn't sure if there would be too much interest in it, or if it would step on the toes of other modules too much. It's kind of similar to the various RSS functions, but i wanted something i could run all from one module, plus if I'm not mistaken, RSS can't support things like multi-level taxonomies. Let me know if something like that would be useful and I'll try to get a CVS account so I can make it public.

Please continue with your findings folks. XML feeds are needed.

Anyone found any solutions for this?

I think its pretty much what i'm after. At the moment I have a flash file that I want to update from drupal. So far I can see I need CCK, Views and Views datasource to generate an xml file which will feed my flash file. Is it possible to create a custom xml using views and views datasource?

Hey guys,

Would being able to generate views output as xml be helpful in these scenarios? I haven't studied what you are doing well enough to know the answer but thought I would at least pass this along:

http://groups.drupal.org/node/11387?no_cache=1268930023

maybe it will help - maybe not...

Cheers...

Hi,
I faced this problem , I was trying to output views to flash slide show, I take look on all the modules mentioned above but nothing where useful for me , because the xml need custom format .

The solution is to do it with view theme !
make view with path and make the path feed.xml for example , Then theme your view to output the fields you want , and dont forget to add this ad the beginning of the file views-view.tpl.php

<?php 
drupal_set_header('Content-Type: text/xml');
?>

take look at this code

<ROTATOR>

	<settings>
	<width>760</width>
		<height>325</height>
		
		<slideTime>2</slideTime>
		<animationTime>0.6</animationTime>
		<blurAmmount>15</blurAmmount>
		<whiteAmmount>25</whiteAmmount>
		<transition>random</transition>
		<autoPlay>on</autoPlay>
		
		<buttonsWidth>200</buttonsWidth>
		<buttonsHeight>300</buttonsHeight>
		<buttonsPosition>right</buttonsPosition>
		<buttonsSpacing>60</buttonsSpacing>
		<buttonsTitleTextSpacing>40</buttonsTitleTextSpacing>
		<buttonsStrokeColor>0x474747</buttonsStrokeColor>
		<buttonsTweenTime>0.7</buttonsTweenTime>
		<buttonsScrollOffset>100</buttonsScrollOffset>
		<buttonsShadow>on</buttonsShadow>
		<buttonsShadowAlpha>0.3</buttonsShadowAlpha>
		
		<buttonsTitleNormalColor>0xffffff</buttonsTitleNormalColor>
		<buttonsTitleSelectedColor>0x000000</buttonsTitleSelectedColor>
		
		<buttonsTextNormalColor>0xFFFFFF</buttonsTextNormalColor>
		<buttonsTextSelectedColor>0x000000</buttonsTextSelectedColor>
		
		<descriptionPosition>down</descriptionPosition>
	</settings>
	<blinds>
		<numStrips>20</numStrips>
	</blinds>
	<pixel>
		<xSections>30</xSections>
		<ySections>30</ySections>
	</pixel>
	<?php print $rows; ?>
	</ROTATOR>
<?php
   module_invoke_all('exit');
   exit;
?>
	

I have build two flash/drupal sites lately.
http://synthmax.dk/lqmd
http://grisestalden.dk

you can read about hoe in exelent book by Travis Tidwell "Flash with Drupal" you dont have to use XML ther is a direct link between flash where you uses services and amfphp on the drupal site and NetConnection in the flash application