keitaro
05-02-2006, 03:01 PM
Since I do not know how much this minor problem affects the general RSS feed backend, I know this is a minor problem on the main news feed.
When you guys started out on providing RSS feed, I mentioned on how using the & symbol in XML strings is incorrect and that the correct usage would be to use & instead. While the news item that was affected by this has then been corrected, the backend has never been fixed in order to ensure future news items were not affected by this minor bug. The news article in question is here (http://www.tfw2005.com/transformers-1145929101.html) and affects feeds showing the last 50 (the value I used) and beyond. At this time, showing the last 30 (and beyond) articles will either warn of XML syntax or error out completely. Using a 'nix software called Liferea, a warning shows up, but continues to parse anyway. Other aggregators will behave differently and react differently. However, this is something I feel is worth bringing up to ensure everything is 100% perfect. After all, who'd want to take the chance of a single software out of a billion that ends up throwing an error at the user?
While this is a minor issue for the RSS backend, the problem could be a bit more widespread given the amount of feeds TFW2005 provides. And such tests would be needed in order to determine if this is a problem that affects other feeds in other sections. I do not know if the problem can be easily fixed... and the old saying "easier said than done" chimes in my mind (being a coder myself).
When you guys started out on providing RSS feed, I mentioned on how using the & symbol in XML strings is incorrect and that the correct usage would be to use & instead. While the news item that was affected by this has then been corrected, the backend has never been fixed in order to ensure future news items were not affected by this minor bug. The news article in question is here (http://www.tfw2005.com/transformers-1145929101.html) and affects feeds showing the last 50 (the value I used) and beyond. At this time, showing the last 30 (and beyond) articles will either warn of XML syntax or error out completely. Using a 'nix software called Liferea, a warning shows up, but continues to parse anyway. Other aggregators will behave differently and react differently. However, this is something I feel is worth bringing up to ensure everything is 100% perfect. After all, who'd want to take the chance of a single software out of a billion that ends up throwing an error at the user?
While this is a minor issue for the RSS backend, the problem could be a bit more widespread given the amount of feeds TFW2005 provides. And such tests would be needed in order to determine if this is a problem that affects other feeds in other sections. I do not know if the problem can be easily fixed... and the old saying "easier said than done" chimes in my mind (being a coder myself).