Get size of Wordpress RSS feed? - wordpress

Question

The scenario:
I have a flash website (here) that imports some of its content from a wordpress site (here) via the Wordpress's RSS (I added a plugin to include pages in the RSS). This isn't a brilliant idea I know, but for a long list of reasons that I won't go into it's the setup I'm stuck with :/
The Problem:
When importing the RSS feed (it's downloaded into the SWF at runtime and read like an XML), I can't get the filesize. This means the preloader isn't accurate (I just manually guessed a number for it to work with for now, which obviously will grow over time). How do I get this file size?
I know there may be certain settings on the server that compresses the feed/files (GZip or such), but I'm very unfamiliar with wordpress architecture and despite my best efforts I couldn't find where this setting would be applied.
This is the preloader update code. The 113*1024 is where I want to put rss_loader.bytesTotal (the loader of the WordPress content), but when I do rss_loader.bytesTotal returns as 0:
function update_loading(e:Event):void
{
var total:Number = stage.loaderInfo.bytesTotal + (113 * 1024) + css_loader.bytesTotal;
var loaded:Number = stage.loaderInfo.bytesLoaded + rss_loader.bytesLoaded + css_loader.bytesLoaded;
if (total == loaded)
{
updatePicture(360);
loading_mc.perc.text = "100%";
removeEventListener(Event.ENTER_FRAME,update_loading);
nextFrame();
}
else
{
var deg:Number = (loaded / total) * 360;
updatePicture(deg);
loading_mc.perc.text = String(int((loaded / total) * 100))+"%";
}
}
Here's the RSS import code, though I don't believe it's very relevant:
var rss_xml:XML = new XML();
var post_xml:XML = new XML();
var page_xml:XML = new XML();
var rss_loader:URLLoader;
rss_loader = new URLLoader(new URLRequest("http://news.sulsc.org/feed"));
function rss_loaded(e:Event):void
{
rss_xml = XML(e.target.data);
var rss_raw:String = String(rss_xml);
rss_raw = rss_raw.split(":encoded").join("");
rss_raw = rss_raw.split("\n").join("");
rss_raw = rss_raw.split('<p style="text-align: right;">').join('<p class="right">');
rss_raw = rss_raw.split('<p style="text-align: center;">').join('<p class="centre">');
rss_raw = rss_raw.split('<p style="text-align: left;">').join('<p class="left">');
rss_raw = rss_raw.split('<p style="text-align: justify;">').join('<p class="just">');
var heading_replace:RegExp = new RegExp("(</h[0-9]>)(<h[0-9]>)","g9");
var underline_replace:RegExp = new RegExp('<span style="text-decoration: underline;">(.*?)</span>',"gi");
var bold_replace:RegExp = new RegExp('<strong>(.*?)</strong>',"gi");
var italic_replace:RegExp = new RegExp('<em>(.*?)</em>',"gi");
rss_raw = rss_raw.replace(heading_replace,'$1<p class="space"></p>$2');
rss_raw = rss_raw.replace(underline_replace,'<u>$1</u>');
rss_raw = rss_raw.replace(bold_replace,'<b>$1</b>');
rss_raw = rss_raw.replace(italic_replace,'<i>$1</i>');
var page_test:RegExp = new RegExp("http://(news.|www.|)sulsc\\.org/(|wordpress/)\\?page_id=[0-9]+","gi");
page_xml = XML(rss_raw);
post_xml = XML(rss_raw);
rss_xml = null;
for (var i:uint; i<post_xml.channel.item.length(); i++)
{
if (page_test.test(post_xml.channel.item[i]) == true)
{
post_xml.channel.item[i] = "";
i--;
}
if (i == post_xml.channel.item.length()-1)
{
rss_loader.bytesLoaded = 113 * 1024;
}
}
}

Answer 1

I ran into a similar issue with a project last year. Turns out the server wasn't returning the correct header for Flash to pick up on. I can't remember which header it needs to populate bytesTotal, unfortunately, but I did come up with a quick work around.
this.urlLoader.addEventListenever( HTTPStatusEvent.HTTP_RESPONSE_STATUS, this.statusResponse );
private function statusResponse(e:HTTPStatusEvent = null):void{
for ( var i:Number = 0; i < e.responseHeaders.length; i++ ) {
var current:Object = e.responseHeaders[i];
if ( current.name.toLowerCase() == "content-length" ) {
this.bytesTotal = current.value;
break;
}
}
}
This worked for me, although it obviously relies on the server sending a Content-Length header.