Import RSS in Database to make accessible to Flash App?

Databases
1

I want to build a Flash app that displays content from various RSS and XML feeds.

Some feeds are very large and not all data is useful.

Rather than import the whole data from the different feeds straight from the url into Flash (which would take forever anyway) I’m thinking of using a MySQL database to first import the numerous data feeds and then in Flash call a server side script to retreive only the data I need.

This way only data requested is loaded into flash, which is a requirement since I intend to make the flash app available on mobiles as a flashlite app - it keeps the app light and not demanding on network traffic which will ultimately cost money.

I will need to run the import periodically, perhaps once per hour.
I’m not interested in building up an archive of the data since it is time specific and will be out of date, so I intend to clear out data as it expires, perhaps with a daily script.

My Flash AS and PHP is ok, but using MySQL to do something like this is new to me… so was looking for some opinions on the approach and some tips on how to do this import / cleanup or if there is a better way to approach it.

wu zi mu

2

The standard way to schedule recurring tasks in Linux is with cron. You write your PHP script that retrieves the feed and inserts the desired entries into a table, and create a crontab to run that script every hour. Create another script to clear out the old data you don’t want, and create another crontab to run that once a day.