There is something I am trying to accomplish although I'm not really sure where to start.
I currently have a MySql database with a list of articles. The DB contains the article title, content, and some other info like dates, etc.
There is an RSS feed that we monitor for new articles, it's a Google Alert feed that just contains the latest news on certain subjects. I want to be able to automatically monitor this feed and record any feed items that are similar to stories currently in our DB.
I know how to set a script to run automatically, and I know how to parse the RSS feed with SimplePie.
What I need to figure out is how to take the description of the rss feed items, run a check on our DB to see if the feed item is similar to something we have in our DB, and return a numerical score of some sort, sort of like a "similarity rating" or something.
After that I can have the info I need recorded to the DB if the "similarity rating" is above a set limit, which I know how to do.
So my only issue is how to compare each feed item to our current articles, and return a score based on how similar it is.