Thread: Getting latest date from RSS feed

I have some code (below). As you can see, I don't really know what I am doing. I've been hacking at bits of code that looks about right.
The idea is that this routine retrives the location of an rss feed from my blogroll then loads it to scan it for the latest posting date, then update my database with the latest date.


It does cycle through all the links in the recordset but the bit that is supposed to get the latest date, I dont think is anywhere near right.
I think the "For Each objItem In objitems" is probably wrong and for some reason it underlines "thedate" in the update query and says I cant use it because Ive used it before it has been assigned a value, which presumably means the xml scan is not setting the variable to anything. But it says that before I even exectute so I really don't know. Any ideas?

Thanks.

PHP Code:


Protected Sub Button2_Click(sender As Object, e As System.EventArgs) Handles Button2.Click

        Dim connetionString As String
        Dim connection As SqlConnection
        Dim command As SqlCommand
        Dim adapter As New SqlDataAdapter
        Dim ds As New DataSet
        Dim i As Integer
        Dim cellcount As Integer
        Dim objRoot As Object
        Dim objitems As Object
        Dim SQL As String = "select * from tbl_blogroll where rssloc is not null"
        Dim thedate As String
        Dim brid As Integer
        Dim objXML As Object

        connetionString = ConfigurationManager.ConnectionStrings("cerberusConnectionString").ConnectionString
        connection = New SqlConnection(connetionString)
        connection.Open()
        command = New SqlCommand(SQL, connection)
        adapter.SelectCommand = command
        adapter.Fill(ds)

        For i = 0 To ds.Tables(0).Rows.Count - 1
            Dim rss As String = ds.Tables(0).Rows(i).Item(3)
            Dim thefeed As String = rss
            brid = ds.Tables(0).Rows(i).Item(0)

            objXML = Server.CreateObject("MSXML2.DOMDocument.4.0")
            objXML = Server.CreateObject("Microsoft.XMLDOM")
            objXML.Async = False
            objXML.SetProperty("ServerHTTPRequest", True)
            objXML.ResolveExternals = True
            objXML.ValidateOnParse = True
            objXML.Load(thefeed)
            cellcount = 0

            If (objXML.parseError.errorCode = 0) Then
                objRoot = objXML.documentElement
                objitems = objRoot.getElementsByTagName("item")
                For Each objItem In objitems
                    On Error Resume Next
                    thedate = objItem.selectSingleNode("pubDate").Text
                Next
            End If

            objXML = Nothing

            Using Conn As New SqlConnection(ConfigurationManager.ConnectionStrings("cerberusConnectionString").ConnectionString)
                Dim sql1 As String = "update tbl_blogroll set Lupdate='" + thedate + "' where brid=" + brid
                Dim myCommand1 As New SqlCommand(sql1, Conn)
                myCommand1.ExecuteNonQuery()
            End Using
        Next i

        adapter.Dispose()
        command.Dispose()
        connection.Close()
        Response.Redirect("Default.aspx")

    End Sub 


Nope. That's because the assignment of a value is included in an If loop so there's a possibility (at least as far as the IDE is concerned) that a null exception could occur. Just do ..

Dim thedate As String = ""