The sfSitemap2Plugin offers an object interface for sitemap - output methods for displaying urls on a page and serving sitemap through a symfony application.

Possible uses

• serving a sitemap based on model objects

Contents

This plugin contains three data structure classes:

• sfSitemap
• sfSitemapItem

It also contains specific classes containing specific input/output methods based on specific sitemap formats:

• sfSitemap
• sfSitemapPeer

Installation

• Install the plugin

$ symfony plugin-install http://plugins.symfony-project.com/sfSitemap2Plugin

• Alternatively, if you don't have PEAR installed, you can download the latest package attached to this plugin's wiki page and extract it under your project's plugins/ directory

• Clear the cache to enable the autoloading to find the new class

$ symfony cc

Tutorials

Building a sitemap from an array of objects

Example data

Let's take an example of a simple blog application with a Post and an Author table:

The Post class is extended by a getStrippedTitle() method that transforms the title into a string that can be used in an URI, replacing spaces by dashes, upper case by lower case, and removing all special characters:

public function getStrippedTitle()
{
  $text = strtolower($this->getTitle());

  // strip all non word chars
  $text = preg_replace('/\W/', ' ', $text);
  // replace all white space sections with a dash
  $text = preg_replace('/\ +/', '-', $text);
  // trim dashes
  $text = preg_replace('/\-$/', '', $text);
  $text = preg_replace('/^\-/', '', $text);

  return $text;
}

The Author class is extended by a custom ->getName() method as follows:

public function getName()
{
  return $this->getFirstName().' '.$this->getLastName()
}

If you need more details about the way to extend the model, refer to Chapter 8.

The routing.yml contains the following rule:

post:
    url:   /permalink/:stripped_title
    param: { module: post, action: read }

If you need more details about the routing system, refer to Chapter 9.

A special feed module is built for the occasion, and all the actions and templates will be placed in it.

$ symfony init-module myapp sitemap

Expected result

The sitemap action has to output an sitemap. As a reminder of all the information that need to be included in an sitemap, here is an example:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<urlset xmlns="http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xsi:schemaLocation="http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9  http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9/sitemap.xsd">
<url>
  <loc>http://www.myblog.com/</loc>
  <lastMod>2005-12-11T16:23:51+00:00</lastMod>
  <changeFreq>always</changeFreq>
  <priority>0.8</priority>
</url>
<url>
  <loc>http://www.myblog.com/permalink/i-love-mice</loc>
  <lastMod>2005-12-11T16:23:51+00:00</lastMod>
  <changeFreq>monthly</changeFreq>
  <priority>0.5</priority>
</url>
<url>
  <loc>http://www.myblog.com/permalink/a-mouse-is-better-than-a-fish</loc>
  <lastMod>2005-12-11T16:23:51+00:00</lastMod>
  <changeFreq>monthly</changeFreq>
  <priority>0.5</priority>
</url>
</urlset>

Using the creators and setters

To build the sitemap, you need to initialize it with a certain format and options, and to add url items based on the objects resulting from a database request. With the syntax of the sfSitemap and sfSitemapItem class, that would give:

public function executeAllPosts()
{
  $sitemap = new sfSitemapFeed();

  $priority = '0.3';
  $freq = 'weekly';

  $posts = PostPeer::doSelect(new Criteria());

  foreach ($posts as $post)
  {
    $item = new sfSitemapItem();
    $item->setLoc('@permalink?stripped_title='.$post->getStrippedTitle());
    $item->setLastMod($post->getCreatedAt('U'));
    $item->setPriority($priority);
    $item->setChangeFreq($freq);

    $sitemap->addItem($item);
  }

  $this->sitemap = $sitemap;
}

At the end of the action, the $sitemap variable contains a sfSitemap object which includes several sfSitemapItem objects. To transform the object into an actual Sitemap, the allPostsSuccess.php template simply contains:

<?php decorate_with(false) ?>
<?php echo $feed->asXml() ?>

The content type is automatically set by the asXML() method, depending on the XML format.

When called from a sitemap aggregator, the result of the action is now exactly the sitemap described above:

http://www.myblog.com/sitemap/allPosts

Using the initialize() method

The use of all the setters for the sitemap and item construction can be a little annoying, since there is a lot of information to define. sfSitemapItem class provide an initialize() method that uses an associative array for a shorter syntax:

public function executeAllPosts()
{
  $sitemap = new sfSitemapFeed();

  $posts = PostPeer::doSelect(new Criteria() );

  $priority = '0.3';
  $freq = 'weekly';

  foreach ($posts as $post)
  {
    $item = new sfSitemapItem();
    $item->initialize(array(
      'loc'        => '@permalink?stripped_title='.$post->getStrippedTitle(),
      'lastmod'    => $post->getCreatedAt(),
      'changeFreq' => $freq,
      'piority'	   => $priority
    ));

    $sitemap->addItem($item);
  }

  $this->sitemap = $sitemap;
}

It has exactly the same effect as the previous listing, but the syntax is clearer.

Using the sfSitemapPeer static methods

The sfSitemapPeer class offer helper methods that facilitate the creation and population of sitemap items.

When the sitemap format is determined at runtime, create sitemap objects using the sfSitemapPeer::newInstance() method, which is a factory, rather that using the new command:

$sitemap = sfSitemapPeer::newInstance('default');
// same as
$sitemap = new sfDefaultSitemap();

Project page

• Mainpage of project: http://code.google.com/p/sfsitemap2/
• Issues: http://code.google.com/p/sfsitemap2/issues/list
• SVN source: http://code.google.com/p/sfsitemap2/source

Plugin created by Polish users - http://www.symfony.pl/

TODO

• create class contaning Sitemap Index.

Changelog

2007-10-21 | 0.0.1 Alpha

• jupeter: Initial release