For increased security, DFF will now recommend using the function file_get_contents() or cURL instead of include();

Remote inclusion of remote PHP file or any remote file is a security hole in PHP. It has worked well for DFF for almost 3 years because the files affiliates are including from DFF are not malicious. Nevertheless it is not best practice.

Instead of using:

include("http://www.datafeedfile.com/some_dff_script.php?affid=...&".$_SERVER['QUERY_STRING']);

DFF recommends change to:

echo file_get_contents("http://www.datafeedfile.com/some_dff_script.php?affid=....&".$_SERVER['QUERY_STRING']);

or you can use the cURL library/extension like this:

$ch = curl_init("http://www.datafeedfile.com/some_dff_script.php?affid=....&".$_SERVER['QUERY_STRING']); curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, TRUE); if(($DFF_output = curl_exec($ch))===FALSE) die("Error getting content from DFF"); else echo $DFF_output; curl_close($ch);

We will create a new wiki documentation page to explain these new methods:
http://wiki.datafeedfile.com/dffRemoteInclude

Dear Affiliates,

Since there have been increasing demand to use DFF with a flat monthly fee, we have just made this service available to the public.

A flat fee monthly service will basically eliminate the 4th click sharing in exchange for a flat monthly fee.

http://billing.datafeedfile.com/cart.php?gid=2

The payment can be accepted by Paypal and/or Google Checkout using credit cards, etc...

Please keep in mind that this is a continual monthly subscription service. There is no contract. You can cancel service and return to 4th click shared commission model at any time.

Hello All,

We have created many web sites for DFF affiliates on the side to test our PHP Library / Framework which uses our JSON web services.

Using JSON / XML allows programmer to be very flexible and have full control of the output. Using JSON / XML does require a higher learning curve and/or possibly an experience programmer. But we believe the result is worth every minute spent.

Because creating a fully working price comparison site is quite difficult even when using DataFeedFile.com's web services, we have created the DFF PHP Client Library which has been tested many times for the past 6 months.

Here is a link to DFF's first fully working Price Comparison Shopping sample web site using our own DFF PHP Client Library:

http://sample-phpapi.datafeedfile.com

The above example website is a niche (vertical market) for pets supply specific products. But the basic concept is there to make a general price comparison shopping site.

The entire web site can be downloaded from a compressed ZIP file and only require modification of the DFF/DFF_config.php (main DFF configuration file) to make it work.

Our first example is only available for PHP programmers right now.

The entire source code, picture, icon, CSS, etc are all in the ZIP file. You are free to change and customize to your own liking. You may even rework it and use it to develop other people's web site. The only restriction is that you have to leave the credits declaration to give credit back to DataFeedFile.com.

Other niche price comparison sites we have developed are:

http://freelance.datafeedfile.com/comparessd
http://freelance.datafeedfile.com/icomparenetbooks

If you are looking for a Deal / Coupon site, we have an Open Source coupon sample site also here:

http://sample.datafeedfile.com/demo/dse/

Please post any question or bug at our Suppor Ticket system.

Regards,

Andrew -@- DataFeedFile.com
( Founder ) - Affiliate Price Comparison Shopping Tools

DFF's version 1 XML feed for price search engine was started when we did not have much experience creating web services / API.

Since then we have created JSON web services and discovered our XML feed was lacking a lot of information, so we decided to write a version 2 of our XML feed. To use version 2, you simply can replace the file name xml_search.php to xml_search2.php.

Please review the version 2 XML formats and adapt / upgrade as necessary.

If you find any bug or problem in version 1 or 2, please open support ticket and we will address those problems immediately.

Thank you

Andrew