[geckoday]

Here's my solution using RSS and a Smarty plugin to pull the latest posts from any wordpress blog.

Create this file include/templater/plugins/function.sr_wpfeed.php:

PHP Code:

<?php
if ( !defined('XCART_START') ) { header("Location: home.php"); die("Access denied"); }
## -----------------------------------------------------------------------------
## Smarty plugin "sr_wpfeed"
## Purpose: Return wordpress RSS feed
##          Snow River X-Cart web store
##
## Author: Ralph Day, Snow River
##
##
## -----------------------------------------------------------------------------
##
## Changelog:
##
## 2009-10-26 Created (RD)
##
##
## -----------------------------------------------------------------------------
##
##
## Sample usage
## ------------
## {sr_wpfeed var="someposts" wpsite="http://www.snowriver.com/uggs-and-more" num=2}
## {foreach from=$someposts item=somepost}
##   <h2>
##     <a href="{$someposts.link}">
##       {$someposts.title}
##     </a>
##   </h2>
##   {$someposts.description}
##   <br>
## {/foreach}
## 
##
## Parameters
## ----------
## var [string] (required)
##      Name for Smarty variable to return feed array in
## 
## wpsite [string] (required)
##      URL of Wordpress site
## 
## num [integer] (required)
##      number of posts to return
## 
## 
## -----------------------------------------------------------------------------

function smarty_function_sr_wpfeed($params, &$smarty) {

  global $sql_tbl;
  global $store_language;

  $required_params = array('var','wpsite', 'num');

  foreach($required_params as $_key => $reqd_param) {
    if (!isset($params[$reqd_param]))
      $smarty->trigger_error("sr_wpfeed: required attribute '$reqd_param' not passed", E_USER_ERROR);
  }

  $var      = '';
  $wpsite = '';
  $num = 0;
  foreach($params as $_key => $_val) {
    switch($_key) {
      case 'wpsite':
      case 'var':
          if (!is_array($_val)) {
              if ($_val <> '')
                $$_key = $_val;
              else
                $smarty->trigger_error("sr_wpfeed: '$_key' cannot be an empty string", E_USER_ERROR);
          } else
              $smarty->trigger_error("sr_wpfeed: '$_key' cannot be an array", E_USER_ERROR);
          break;
          
      case 'num':
          if (!is_array($_val)) {
            $$_key = (int)$_val;
            if ($$_key < 0 || $$_key >25)
                $smarty->trigger_error("sr_wpfeed: '$_key' not between 1 and 25", E_USER_ERROR);
          } else
              $smarty->trigger_error("sr_wpfeed: '$_key' cannot be an array", E_USER_ERROR);
          break;

      default:
          $smarty->trigger_error("sr_wpfeed: attribute '$_key' not recognized", E_USER_NOTICE);
          break;
    }
  }
    if(!$xml=simplexml_load_file($wpsite.'/feed')){
        $smarty->trigger_error('Error reading XML file',E_USER_ERROR);
    }
  $posts = array();
    foreach($xml as $item){
        for($i=0; $i<count($item->item); $i++){
            if($i<$num){
        $posts[] = array('link'         =>  (string)$item->item[$i]->link
                       , 'title'        =>  htmlentities($item->item[$i]->title,ENT_COMPAT, 'UTF-8')
                       , 'description'  =>  $item->item[$i]->description
                       );
      }
        }
    }

  $smarty->assign($var, $posts);
}
?>

Then in whatever template you want to display the posts in you can display the posts something like this:

{sr_wpfeed var="someposts" wpsite="http://www.snowriver.com/uggs-and-more" num=2}
{foreach from=$someposts item=somepost}
  <h2>
    <a href="{$someposts.link}">
      {$someposts.title}
    </a>
  </h2>
  {$someposts.description}
  <br>
{/foreach}

This should work in any version of X-Cart as it doesn't use any X-Cart functions. Also there are no modifications to X-Cart php code so it doesn't get wiped out by upgrades.