Here's some extra juice for our site ;)
I've used last.fm for a while, so that's the first place I would look for a chart on Amy (or Metallica :) ), but here is how to add that chart to your site...
Nice people from last.fm are wiling to share their data under CC license.
So let's take a look at http://ws.audioscrobbler.com/1.0/artist/Metallica/toptracks.xml , notice that this is xml file, we dont't have xml importer for Vivvo (yet)....
So here goes the grabber
class box_xml_grabber extends module {
var $data;
function object2array($object){
$return = NULL;
if(is_array($object)){
foreach($object as $key => $value){
$key = str_replace('@', '_', $key);
$return[$key] = $this->object2array($value);
}
}else{
$var = get_object_vars($object);
if($var){
foreach($var as $key => $value){
$key = str_replace('@', '_', $key);
$return[$key] = $this->object2array($value);
}
}else{
return strval($object); // strval and everything is fine
}
}
return $return;
}
/**
* Generate box output
*
* @param array $params Parameters
*/
function generate_output($params){
$this->set_template($params);
if ($params['url'] != ''){
$data = @simplexml_load_file($params['url']);
if ($data){
$this->data = $this->object2array($data);
$this->_template->assign('xml_data', $this->data);
}
}
}
}
This box module can be used generally to fetch xml data. It relies on simplexml extension (PHP 5) and remote fopen being allowed.
Now we have to register new module in configuration table:
INSERT INTO `tblConfiguration` ( `id` , `variable_name` , `variable_property` , `variable_value` , `module` , `domain_id` , `reg_exp` )
VALUES (NULL , 'box_xml_grabber', 'class_name', 'box_xml_grabber', 'modules', '1', NULL),
(NULL , 'box_xml_grabber', 'file', 'my_boxes.php', 'modules', '1', NULL);
You'll have to do this manually (from phpMyAdmin, or something ...)
And finally the template:
<vte:box module="box_xml_grabber">
<vte:params>
<vte:param name="url" value="http://ws.audioscrobbler.com/1.0/artist/Metallica/toptracks.xml" />
</vte:params>
<vte:template>
<div class="box">
<div class="box_title_holder">
<div class="box_title">
<vte:foreach item="attr" from="{xml_data[_attributes]}"><vte:value select="{attr}" /></vte:foreach> @ last.fm
</div>
</div>
<div class="box_body">
<div class="box_content">
<ul>
<vte:foreach item="track" from="{xml_data[track]}" loop="10">
<li><vte:value select="{track[name]}" /> (<vte:value select="{track[reach]}" />)</li>
</vte:foreach>
</ul>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</vte:template>
</vte:box>
I suggest putting this template in right column on artist article page.
For adjusting url to audioscrobbler you can use similar method I previously discussed for title to tag conversion.