Get the total entries and the href attribute from an atom feed

Hi,

I have two problems in this atom reader:

how can I get the total items of this feed which is <entry> node?

how can I get the href from the <link> node?

<?php
    /**
     * @integer @limit | default:1
     */
    function atom_reader($url,$limit = 1,$title =  null)
    {
    	$xml = ($url); //http://twitter.com/statuses/friends_timeline/321998072.rss
    	$xmlDoc = new DOMDocument();
    	$xmlDoc->load($xml);
    
    	# Count the total feed with xpath.
    	$xpath = new DOMXPath($xmlDoc);
    	$total_feed = $xpath->evaluate('count(entry)');
    	
    	//return $total_feed;
    
    	# Set feed limit.
    	$limit_feed = $limit;
    
    	# Check if the total feed is less than the limit then use the total feed as the limit.
    	if($limit_feed >= $total_feed) $limit_feed = $total_feed;
    	
    	# Set the variable.
    	$output = '';
    	
    	# get and output "<item>" elements
    	$x = $xmlDoc -> getElementsByTagName('entry');
    
    	for ($i=0; $i<2; $i++)
    	{	
    		$item_title = $x->item($i)->getElementsByTagName('title')->item(0)->childNodes->item(0)->nodeValue;
    		//$item_link = $x->item($i)->getElementsByTagName('link')->item(0)->childNodes->item(0)->nodeValue;
    		$item_date = $x->item($i)->getElementsByTagName('updated')->item(0)->childNodes->item(0)->nodeValue;
    		$item_content = $x->item($i)->getElementsByTagName('content')->item(0)->childNodes->item(0)->nodeValue;
    
    		# NOTE: use this code for the server runs PHP5.3
    		# DateTime::add — Adds an amount of days, months, years, hours, minutes and seconds to a DateTime object
    		$date = new DateTime($item_date);
    
    		# change the date format into Y-m-d H:i:s
    		$item_date = $date->format('j F Y');
    
    		# count time ago from the published date
    		//$time_ago = time_ago($date->format('Y-m-d H:i:s'),'d M Y \\a\	 H:i');
            $time_ago = $date->format('j F Y');
    		
    		$output .= '<li><p>'.strip_tags($item_content).'<br/>'.$time_ago.'</p></li>';
    	}
    	
    	return $output;
    	
    }
    
    echo atom_reader($url = 'http://www.globaltoleranceconnect.com/profiles/blog/feed?xn_auth=no',$limit = 4);
    ?>

the atom feed I get is like this,

<feed xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom">
      <id>http://localhost:8080/resources/timezones</id>
      <title type="text">Time Zones</title>
      <link href="http://localhost:8080/resources/timezones" rel="self">
      </link>
      <author>
        <name>sandra</name>
      </author>
      <entry>
        <id>http://localhost:8080/resources/timezones/Etc_GMT+12</id>
        <title type="text">Etc/GMT+12 :: GMT-12:00</title>
        <link href="http://localhost:8080/resources/timezones/Etc_GMT+12" rel="self">
        </link>
        <author>
          <name>No Author</name>
        </author>
        <updated>1970-01-01T00:00:00.000Z</updated>
        <content type="text">Oct 23, 2008 4:12:37 AM</content>
      </entry>
      <entry>
        <id>http://localhost:8080/resources/timezones/Etc_GMT+11</id>
        <title type="text">Etc/GMT+11 :: GMT-11:00</title>
        <link href="http://localhost:8080/resources/timezones/Etc_GMT+11" rel="self">
        </link>
        <updated>1970-01-01T00:00:00.000Z</updated>
        <content type="text">Oct 23, 2008 5:12:37 AM</content>
      </entry>
      <entry>
        <id>http://localhost:8080/resources/timezones/MIT</id>
        <title type="text">MIT :: West Samoa Time</title>
        <link href="http://localhost:8080/resources/timezones/MIT" rel="self">
        </link>
        <updated>1970-01-01T00:00:00.000Z</updated>
        <content type="text">Oct 23, 2008 5:12:37 AM</content>
      </entry>
      .
      .
      .
      </feed>

this does not return the total items,

$xpath = new DOMXPath($xmlDoc);
    	$total_feed = $xpath->evaluate('count(entry)');

and this does not get the href of the <link>,

$item_link = $x->item($i)->getElementsByTagName('link')->item(0)->attribute;

any idea?

Thanks,
Lau