No-op `MagpieRSS`

[desrosj]

MagpieRSS is an XML-based RSS parser built in the days of PHP 4.x.

MagpieRSS has been deprecated in WordPress since version 3.0 was released in 2010. The library itself has not been updated since 2004 and is abandoned.

Since then the library has continued to be included with WordPress to avoid breaking any sites that may have been using it. It has been deemed an "adopted" external library, but only the following very minor updates have been made:

• inline documentation.
• changes to avoid fatal PHP errors in modern versions of PHP.
• changes to avoid deprecated notices/other warnings in modern versions of PHP.

Looking at the plugin directory, there is ​almost no meaningful usage of the class. 90-95% of the matches are false positives related to identifying when a crawler is accessing pages/feeds.

Enough time has passed since deprecating this class where no-opping can be considered to avoid continuing to ship code that no one is using.

[desrosj]

Linking some additional history:

• #11982 handled deprecating MagpieRSS (committed in [12822]).
• WordPress Core was updated to use SimplePie instead of MagpieRSS in 2007 in #4547.

[anantajitjg]

Based on the ticket, #57102, I am also in favor of removing this from the core WordPress files. Since this is in core WordPress files, I have submitted the PR for the ticket #57102. Looking forward to more updates.

[ironprogrammer]

Related: #58337.