RSS News Feed Errors
18 Feb 2006 5:00:14 UTC
Topic 190793
(moderation:
"welcome" news item's date always changes to current date, so when viewed in a "sort by date" list, it's always near the "newest" end of the list, this only happens at einstein, no other projects
(there are other errors affecting all projects, but they're being addressed at SETI)
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RSS News Feed Errors
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I don't know what might be causing this problem. I don't have a tool for viewing RSS feeds, so I can't reproduce this. But I'll try and install an RSS viewer to see this for myself.
Cheers,
Bruce
Director, Einstein@Home
I use SharpReader
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I use SharpReader
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I just installed a basic RSS
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I just installed a basic RSS reader on my laptop and saw a number of different problems with the RSS pages. I think I have now fixed these. I would be very grateful if you and other RSS-savvy volunteers could poke around the RSS pages and see if everything now looks OK. If not, let me know and I'll continue to try and fix it.
Cheers,
Bruce
Director, Einstein@Home
Thanks Bruce :) If you're
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Thanks Bruce :)
If you're wanting to make it bullet proof, you might want to try the FEED Validator, a valid feed shouldn't have any issues being parsed (unlike many feeds unfortunetly)
[edit]but i see that's it's already valid :)[/edit]
for the GUID problem (which is an issue with the boinc backagae, not just einstein), if you don't want to wait untill this is fixed in the CVS then you can find some relavent info over at SETI
you can just wait till it's fixed in the CVS thou, and it'll be resolved the next time you upgrade (i'm hoping they'll fix it, because it completely confuses my reader and messes up the feed)
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I've had a poke around, and i
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I've had a poke around, and i can only assume that the cause of the welcome entry always changing date is due to incorrect s (but that's not your fault, it's not implemented correctly on all projects that have upgraded recently), but i'm hoping that these issues will be resolved in the CVS
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RE: I've had a poke around,
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I changed this to one which I think is valid (at least according to the feed validator it is). Please tell me if you still think there is something wrong with this. Be sure to reload your browser or RSS feed tool.
Director, Einstein@Home
well, everything's fine
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well, everything's fine untill a new item is added
the GUID for an item should NEVER change, becuase GUIDs are to make it easier for a reader to identify if an item is the same one or not (compared to what it's already got)
if they change, then it thinks the content of the item has changed
from what i said at SETI...
...feeds are using incorrectly, which causes undesired behaviour in feed readers when new items are added.
GUID's should never change. They're to make it easier to identify individual items so that a reader knows if they're the same as ones it's already got, or different ones.
But when a new item is added, all the GUID shift so that the first item is 0 and the following items increment by 1, as stated, the correct behaviour is that they don't change for a particular item, but they need to be different for different items (only need to be unique per feed, not globally).
So to try and explain what happens from the readers point of view...
* new item is added
* new item is 0, all following items change so that they increment by 1 from the (new) first item
* a GUID is ment to be gospel, so a reader should assume that they never change (the feed is "broken" otherwise), this results in the reader thinking that the content has changed (but in actual fact the guid's have shifted)
* the reader, seeing that the content of all items has apparently changed (because the content for a given guid is different) marks all items as "updated" rather than marking the new one as "new"
* this happens everytime a new item is added, and continues forever :(
It doesn't matter what the string is, there's no requirement in the spec, but one suggestion is to use a permanent link URL. Linking to the item in your archives is the standard way, because it won't be on the front page forever, so for an item on the 14th Feb 2006 you could link to "http://einstein.phys.uwm,edu/old_news.php#2006-02-14--01" 2006-02-14 is obviously the date, but the 01 is so that you can differenciate between different items on the same day, you could use the time instead: 2006-02-14--12-34.
If you just use a generic value then specify , if the guid value is a permanent link, then use
a good non-permanent link guid scheme is to have your oldest item as 1 then the next (more recent) as 2 etc. so that each new item has a guid incremented by 1 comparted to the previous item
hope that explains the problem better :)
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the "welcome" item has
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the "welcome" item has disapeared all together, not that i mind, i don't know if it's intentional, just thought i'd state my observations
I'll post here again when a new item is added with what happened
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RE: the "welcome" item has
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Yes, I got rid of the welcome from the news feed. It was only put there as a simple way to get it onto the front page.
The GUID were but I've now changed them to "true" ones. Is this better?
I'll post another news item in the next few days to see if things then work better for you.
Bruce
Director, Einstein@Home
RE: RE: the "welcome"
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had a look at the feed, and yes, looks perfect :)
I wasn't actually expecting permalinks to be used, just proper s, but it's great that you have, and the numbering scheme looks like it'll work properly now :)
thanks bruce
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