Centeralized News Source

How about fetching a news page from Website A and injecting its HTML straight into your pages on Websites B, C, and D?

<?php echo file_get_contents('http://websiteA.com/news_include.php'); ?>

Hope this helps!

Hi Chris, thanks but I would like to be able to alter the where statement on each site locally. Really I need to connect to two databases at the same time on certain pages.

Hi Ryan,

Are the sites hosted on the same server? If so, it might be possible to call the viewer functions of site A from sites B, C and D, and have access to its getRecords function.

Do sites B, C and D have access to the MySQL database of site A? If so you could just manually create a MySQL call to get the data you require:

http://www.w3schools.com/php/php_mysql_select.asp

If the sites are on different hosting services, and there isn't a way to share the data directly, you could create a mini "API" to share the data from site A to sites B, C and D. 

On site A, you could use the getRecords function to share your news feed, and json encode it. Here's a quick example I made of the API system:

<?php

//Set the header as a json object, as this is what our API is going to output.
header('Content-type: application/json');
  
// load viewer library
$libraryPath = 'cmsAdmin/lib/viewer_functions.php';
$dirsToCheck = array('/home/greg/www/','','../','../../','../../../');
foreach ($dirsToCheck as $dir) { if (@include_once("$dir$libraryPath")) { break; }}
if (!function_exists('getRecords')) { die("Couldn't load viewer library, check filepath in sourcecode."); }

// load records from 'news'
list($carsRecords, $carsMetaData) = getRecords(array(
  'tableName'   => 'cars',
  'perPage'     => '10',
  'loadUploads' => true,
  'allowSearch' => false,
));


//Prepare the data for being output as a single array
$finalArray = array('data' => $carsRecords, 'meta' => $carsMetaData);


//display the final array as a json object
echo json_encode($finalArray);

So we're using the standard getRecords function on site A to retrieve our data, but instead of displaying it as HTML, we're displaying it as a JSON object that can easily be retrieved and read by another site. 

Then on Sites B, C and D, we need to create a system to retrieve this data and display it on the page. The best way to do this is to use the getPage function which is built into CMS Builder:

<?php header('Content-type: text/html; charset=utf-8'); ?>
<?php
  /* STEP 1: LOAD RECORDS - Copy this PHP code block near the TOP of your page */
  
  // load viewer library
  $libraryPath = 'cmsAdmin/lib/viewer_functions.php';
  $dirsToCheck = array('/home/greg/www/','','../','../../','../../../');
  foreach ($dirsToCheck as $dir) { if (@include_once("$dir$libraryPath")) { break; }}
  if (!function_exists('getRecords')) { die("Couldn't load viewer library, check filepath in sourcecode."); }

  
  //Pass any variables that are set in the URL (for example page number, search filters, etc) and turn them into a URL string.
  $string = http_build_query($_REQUEST);


  /*
  *  You'll need to put the address of the page that's creating our json object on site A as the first variable in the getPage function, the $string variable ensures that 
  *  any variables on the current site are passed to site A. getPage returns several variables, the first of which should be the json object.
  */
  list($html, $httpStatusCode, $header, $request) = getPage('http://localhost/test.php?'.$string, 3);

  
  //If we receive anything but a 200 code, then something's gone wrong sending the data from site A. So we stop processing and display an error.
  if($httpStatusCode != 200){ die ("The news page on site A is currently down, please come back later!"); }

  //Convert the json object sent by site A into a PHP array.
  $returnedData = json_decode($html, true);

  //Recreate the original variables from the getRecords function of site A
  $carsRecords = $returnedData['data'];
  $carsMetaData = $returnedData['meta'];

  //The showme function will just display the data from the array, but you can now use the data as you would with a normal getRecords function. 
  showme($carsRecords);
  showme($carsMetaData);

Hopefully the notes in the code above explain what's happening at each step clearly. 

The only potential issue with this system is that sites B,C and D are going to have to wait for the data to be sent from site A, which will increase page load times. Also, if site A goes down, then the news pages for sites B, C and D will go down as well.

Let me know if you have any questions!

Cheers!

Greg

> I would like to be able to alter the where statement on each site locally.

Another option would be to use three separate includes on website A:

On website B:

<?php echo file_get_contents('http://websiteA.com/news_include_B.php'); ?>

On website C:

<?php echo file_get_contents('http://websiteA.com/news_include_C.php'); ?>

On website D:

<?php echo file_get_contents('http://websiteA.com/news_include_D.php'); ?>

Thanks Chris / Greg, In the end I set up a new SQL connection manually and pulled the record across from the parent website.