How to display an image in a Views RSS feed

Question

I am trying to display an image in a Views RSS feed.

1. I have added the following fields to my View: field_image, field_title, field_twitter (These fields come from my node).
2. I then set all fields to "Exclude from display".
3. I then create a new field in Views called "RSS Content".
4. I then place tokens for all the fields (from step 1) into "RSS Content".
5. Finally, I go to "Views >> Show >> Settings". In the drop down menu for "Description field", I select "RSS Content".

When I look at my RSS feed, the image field is displayed like this:

    <description> 
&lt;img src=&quot;http://example.com/sites/files/nodes/content/images/intro/two-hearts-1312984-1280x960_0.jpg&quot; /&gt;
</description>

How do I get the image to display properly, instead of the image tags being escaped?

Answer 1

First add the Media RSS namespace to your views-view-rss.tpl.php

<rss version="2.0" xml:base="<?php print $link; ?>"<?php print $namespaces; ?> xmlns:media="http://search.yahoo.com/mrss/">

Then add the tag to your views-view-row-rss.tpl.php

<media:content url="<?php print image_style_url('my_img_style_id', $node->field_image['und'][0]['uri']); ?>" type="image/jpeg" medium="image" height="800" width="600" lang="en" />

Lastly make the field data available to your theme's template

function mytheme_preprocess_views_view_row_rss(&$vars) {
  $view     = &$vars['view'];
  $options  = &$vars['options'];
  $item     = &$vars['row'];

  // Use the [id] of the returned results to determine the nid in [results]
  $result = &$vars['view']->result;
  $id   = &$vars['id'];
  $node   = node_load( $result[$id-1]->nid );
  $vars['node'] = $node;
}

Original article: https://blog.sam-thompson.info/images-in-drupal-rss-feed-without-additional-modules/

Answer 2

I have come across similar problems and somehow CDATA wrapping didn't work for me. I had to override the rss view and create the cdata tag and wrap image inside it programmatically.

I have done this by overriding the RSS view created by views_rss and views_data_export.

Here is how my view setup looks like:

To RSS via custom tpl display I created another display called as Feed which is a data export view of first display.

Here is how the feed display look like which I have overridden.

Next I overrode the Feed display tpl's and created the CDATA image field programmatically.

Here is the view tpl files that I overrode.

Now you would need to preprocess rss view in template to make node's nid available to the views.

Here is how I did that.

function bootstrap_preprocess_views_view_row_rss(&$vars) {
$view     = &$vars['view'];
$options  = &$vars['options'];
$item     = &$vars['row'];

// Use the [id] of the returned results to determine the nid in [results]
$result = &$vars['view']->result;
$id   = &$vars['id'];
$node   = node_load( $result[$id-1]->nid );

$vars['title'] = check_plain($item->title);
$vars['link'] = check_url($item->link);
$vars['description'] = check_plain($item->description);
//$vars['description'] = check_plain($node->teaser);
$vars['node'] = $node;
$vars['item_elements'] = empty($item->elements) ? '' : 
format_xml_elements($item->elements);
}

Lastly here is how I created the CDATA tag programmatically with my custom image style.

Code for two view templates: 1. Display template

<?php print "<?xml"; ?> version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" <?php print "?>"; ?>
<rss version="2.0" xml:base="<?php print $link; ?>"<?php print $namespaces; 
?>>
<channel>
<title><?php print $title; ?></title>
<link><?php print $link; ?></link>
<description><?php print $description; ?></description>
<language><?php print $langcode; ?></language>
<?php print $channel_elements; ?>
<?php print $items; ?>
</channel>
</rss>

2. Row template. Here I am creating CDATA and item tag programmatically.

Hope this helps.

Answer 3

wrap it on CDATA tags.

CDATA stands for Character Data and it means that the data in between these strings includes data that could be interpreted as XML markup, but should not be.