RSS Feed Reader for AbleCommerce 7.x

RSS Reader is a free ASP.NET control for Ablecommerce 7.x that enables users of Ablecommerce to manage RSS feeds from different feed providers. It provides very simple interface for the users to configure a number of different properties which are exposed by the control. These properties can be used to control the display layout and/or enabling disabling different features. One can also easily change styles for the control by modifying the RSS Reader’s style sheet. The RSS Reader control supports all the RSS versions including RSS version 0.90, 0.91, 0.92, and 2.0.1.
Download RSS Reader Control [Screen Shots]

How to deploy and configure the Rss Feed Reader control?

After downloading extract the RssFeedReader.zip file. It will contain 6 files. The remaining steps are explained below.

1. Copy the files named RssReader.ascx and RssReader.ascx.cs to the ConLib folder of your AbleCommerce 7.x installation.
2. Copy the DLL file named RSS.NET.DLL into the bin folder of the AbleCommerce 7.x installation.
3. Place the style sheet file named rss-style.css into the current theme folder with in the App_Themes folder of the AbleCommerce 7.x installation. For example if you are using default Ablecommerce theme then the style-sheet will be placed in App_Themes/AbleCommerce folder.
4. Edit the scriptlet in which you want to use the Rss Reader control and use the Rss Reader control like any other control in the ConLib. For example if you want to put the feed from Yahoo News in your side bar you can place something like this in the corresponding scriptlet.

   1	[[ConLib:RssReader FeedUrl="http://rss.news.yahoo.com/rss/tech" Name="Yahoo Feeds" MaximumResults="3" ShowUpdateDate="true" ShowDescription="true" ShowItemImage="false" ShowPubDate="true" ShowChannelTitle="true" ShowChannelDescription="true" ShowChannelSeperator="true" ShowChannelImage="true"]]

5. There is a file named RssReader.htm congaing the sample scriptlet code for Rss Reader control.
6. There are a number of properties exposed by control in order to manage its layout and contents. You can easily customize the control for your needs by using these properties. A detailed information about these properties is listed below.

Rss Feed Reader control’s properties

Name This is represents the feed title shown at the top of the control.

FeedUrl This property specify the URL from where the control will read the feeds. One instance of the Rss Feed Reader control can fetch feeds from only one URL if you want to show feeds from more then one URL’s then you will have to use to instances of the Rss Feed Reader control.

ShowChannelTitle This boolean type property is used to Enable disable title of the current channel.

ShowChannelSeperator This boolean type property is used to show or hide the seperator line under the channel tittle.

ShowChannelImage This boolean type property is used to show or hide the channel image.

ShowChannelDescription This boolean type property is used to show or hide the channel description.

ShowCopyright This boolean type property is used to show or hide the copy right information in the footer of the control.

MaximumResults This integer type property is used to specify the number of news you wants to see in the conrol. Provide a value greater then 0 to limit the news other wise the control will show all the news.

ShowUpdateDate This boolean type property is used to show or hide the update date of the feeds.

ShowItemImage This boolean type property is used to show or hide the images with the news items.

ShowAuthor This boolean type property is used to show or hide the author information of the news item.

ShowPubDate This boolean type property is used to show or hide the publication date of the news items.

ShowDescription This boolean type property is used to show or hide the description of the news items.