Creating a custom feed for categories that includes the first post’s featured image

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I’m needing a little help getting this figured out. I have a query that’s not quite working right now, but I need it to create a custom feed that includes category information and then includes the featured image from the first post in that category.

Anyone have thoughts on how to get that running?

/**
 * Custom Feed for Category Listing
 */
    function outputXMLFeed()
    {
        echo '<?xml version="1.0"?>';
        echo '<items>';
        $args=array(
          'orderby' => 'name',
          'order' => 'ASC'
        );
        $categories=get_categories($args);
        $posts = get_posts(array('category' => $category->term_id));
        foreach($categories as $category) { 
            echo '<item>';
            echo '<catID>' . $category->term_id . '</catID>';
            echo '<catname>' . $category->name . '</catname>';
            echo '<postcount>' . $category->category_count . '</postcount>';
            echo '<slug>' . $category->slug . '</slug>';
            echo '<featured>' . [VARIABLE HERE] . '</featured>';
            echo '</item>';
        }
        echo '</items>';
    }
    add_action('init', 'add_my_feed');

    function add_my_feed(  ) {
      add_feed("myFeed", "outputXMLFeed");
    }
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  1. First define a function to return the first post of a category by a given category ID ex:

    function get_category_post($cat_id){
    $post_args = array(
        'numberposts' => 1,
        'category' => $cat_id,
        'fields' => 'ids'
    );
    $posts = get_posts($post_args);
    return $posts[0];
}

    Then, once you have that function you can use it like this:

    function outputXMLFeed()
{
    echo '<?xml version="1.0"?>';
    echo '<items>';
    $args=array(
      'orderby' => 'name',
      'order' => 'ASC'
    );
    $categories=get_categories($args);
    foreach($categories as $category) { 
        echo '<item>';
        echo '<catID>' . $category->term_id . '</catID>';
        echo '<catname>' . $category->name . '</catname>';
        echo '<postcount>' . $category->category_count . '</postcount>';
        echo '<slug>' . $category->slug . '</slug>';
        echo '<featured>' . get_the_post_thumbnail(get_category_post($category->term_id) , $size = 'post-thumbnail') . '</featured>';
        echo '</item>';
    }
    echo '</items>';
}
add_action('init', 'add_my_feed');

function add_my_feed(  ) {
  add_feed("myFeed", "outputXMLFeed");
}