How are RSS feeds typically updated?, i.e.:
- are old elements removed? (if so, what is the ageing process?)
- how do you deal with publishing multiple times the same element(s)?
is removing duplicates the responsibility of the reader?

Are these topics addressed in a specification or earlier thread?

Thank you kindly.

Frederic Laruelle.

I am reading this group using RSS and just noticed that Yahoo
never returns 304 (unmodified), returning full feed content each
time. Here is sample TCP dump:

172.030.005.043.62742-066.218.067.020.00080: GET
/group/RSS2-Support/rss HTTP/1.1
User-Agent: Java/1.4.2_05
Host: rss.groups.yahoo.com
Accept: text/html, image/gif, image/jpeg, *; q=.2, */*; q=.2
Connection: keep-alive
If-Modified-Since: Mon, 27 Dec 2004 23:22:44 GMT


066.218.067.020.00080-172.030.005.043.62742: HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Date: Mon, 27 Dec 2004 23:23:37 GMT
Cache-Control: max-age=600
Expires: Mon, 27 Dec 2004 23:33:37 GMT
P3P: policyref="http://p3p.yahoo.com/w3c/p3p.xml", CP="CAO DSP COR CUR
ADM DEV TAI PSA PSD IVAi IVDi CONi TELo OTPi OUR DELi SAMi OTRi UNRi
PUBi IND PHY ONL UNI PUR FIN COM NAV INT DEM CNT STA POL HEA PRE GOV"
Last-Modified: Mon, 27 Dec 2004 23:23:37 GMT
Connection: close
Transfer-Encoding: chunked
Content-Type: text/xml

Am I missnig something, or it is broken?

Vadim

krokodil@... wrote:

>I am reading this group using RSS and just noticed that Yahoo
>never returns 304 (unmodified), returning full feed content each
>time
>
Yahoo! seems to intentionally generate the feed every time it is
requested according to the timestamp, notice that the server time (Date:
header) and the modification date (Last-modified: header) are identical.

There is no requirement to handle If-Modified-Since requests and return
a 304 not modified, it is perfectly valid (and in this case with a time
to live of 10 minutes even reasonable) to always send the content with a
200 response.

GET http://rss.groups.yahoo.com/group/RSS2-Support/rss --> 200 OK
Cache-Control: max-age=600
Connection: close
Date: Mon, 27 Dec 2004 23:30:21 GMT
Content-Type: text/xml
Expires: Mon, 27 Dec 2004 23:40:21 GMT
Last-Modified: Mon, 27 Dec 2004 23:30:21 GMT
Client-Date: Mon, 27 Dec 2004 23:30:24 GMT

--
Klaus Johannes Rusch
KlausRusch@...
http://www.atmedia.net/KlausRusch/

--- In RSS2-Support@yahoogroups.com, Klaus Johannes Rusch
<KlausRusch@a...> wrote:

Yes, I know it is valid, but it is long considered to
be a good practice to implement this to decrease bandwidth
used by a feed. This feed is around 170K which my agreggator
polls each hour. Lots of wated bandwidth.

Sincerely,
Vadim

> krokodil@g... wrote:
>
> >I am reading this group using RSS and just noticed that Yahoo
> >never returns 304 (unmodified), returning full feed content each
> >time
> >
> Yahoo! seems to intentionally generate the feed every time it is
> requested according to the timestamp, notice that the server time
(Date:
> header) and the modification date (Last-modified: header) are identical.
>
> There is no requirement to handle If-Modified-Since requests and return
> a 304 not modified, it is perfectly valid (and in this case with a time
> to live of 10 minutes even reasonable) to always send the content
with a
> 200 response.
>
> GET http://rss.groups.yahoo.com/group/RSS2-Support/rss --> 200 OK
> Cache-Control: max-age=600
> Connection: close
> Date: Mon, 27 Dec 2004 23:30:21 GMT
> Content-Type: text/xml
> Expires: Mon, 27 Dec 2004 23:40:21 GMT
> Last-Modified: Mon, 27 Dec 2004 23:30:21 GMT
> Client-Date: Mon, 27 Dec 2004 23:30:24 GMT
>
> --
> Klaus Johannes Rusch
> KlausRusch@a...
> http://www.atmedia.net/KlausRusch/

>are old elements removed?
Yes, generally RSS feeds remain a fixed length of <item>s and as new
<item>s are added to the front, old <item>s drop off the back. I
maintain exactly 24 <item>s in my RSS file. Most blogging system also
work on a fixed number of <item>s in the RSS feed.

> - how do you deal with publishing multiple times the same element
(s)?
Generally, you don't publish the same items multiple times, but
that's not a rule, just a guideline. You should respect the intent of
the author.

Hope this helps,

Randy
http://www.kbcafe.com


--- In RSS2-Support@yahoogroups.com, Frédéric Laruelle
<laruellef@y...> wrote:
>
> How are RSS feeds typically updated?, i.e.:
> - are old elements removed? (if so, what is the ageing process?)
> - how do you deal with publishing multiple times the same element
(s)?
> is removing duplicates the responsibility of the reader?
>
> Are these topics addressed in a specification or earlier thread?
>
> Thank you kindly.
>
> Frederic Laruelle.

The bandwidth concern and 304 processing is to protect the RSS
publisher against incurring large undesirable bandwidth costs. If the
RSS publisher, in this case Yahoo!, chooses not to implement
conditional GET, then it's their choice and you should respect it.

That said, I don't see why they wouldn't implement it.

MHO,

Randy Charles Morin
http://www.kbcafe.com


> --- In RSS2-Support@yahoogroups.com, Klaus Johannes Rusch
> <KlausRusch@a...> wrote:
>
> Yes, I know it is valid, but it is long considered to
> be a good practice to implement this to decrease bandwidth
> used by a feed. This feed is around 170K which my agreggator
> polls each hour. Lots of wated bandwidth.
>
> Sincerely,
> Vadim

> The bandwidth concern and 304 processing is to protect the RSS
> publisher against incurring large undesirable bandwidth costs. If the
> RSS publisher, in this case Yahoo!, chooses not to implement
> conditional GET, then it's their choice and you should respect it.

It's also important to consider the "don't set a bad example" angle.  It
sets the development of tools back to have a major provider of data ignore
bandwidth management issues.  While they may have cycles to burn for pushing
the data, not everyone has it when retrieving.  When someone on a slow link
in a developing country, a cell phone or other resource-limited connection
tries to see if it's different they end up wasting a lot of bandwidth if
connection negotiation is ignored.

Sure, it's an additional server-side effort to compare the incoming request
headers against the database.  And in yahoo's case that might not be an
inconsiderable amount of CPU.  But it doesn't change the fact it needlessly
burdens the requestor with repeated downloading of unchanged data.  Let's
hope Yahoo fixes this.

-Bill Kearney

--- In RSS2-Support@yahoogroups.com, "Bill Kearney" <ml_yahoo@i...>
wrote:

Well said!

As somebody who was involved with wireless software, I
can confirm that downloading hundreds kilobytes of
data over slow CSD or GPRS connection just for one feed could
render it useless for wireless devices and whole exercise pretty
costly since many carriers charge you per kilobyte for wireless
data.

Vadim

> It's also important to consider the "don't set a bad example"
angle.  It
> sets the development of tools back to have a major provider of data
ignore
> bandwidth management issues.  While they may have cycles to burn for
pushing
> the data, not everyone has it when retrieving.  When someone on a
slow link
> in a developing country, a cell phone or other resource-limited
connection
> tries to see if it's different they end up wasting a lot of
bandwidth if
> connection negotiation is ignored.
>
> Sure, it's an additional server-side effort to compare the incoming
request
> headers against the database.  And in yahoo's case that might not
be an
> inconsiderable amount of CPU.  But it doesn't change the fact it
needlessly
> burdens the requestor with repeated downloading of unchanged data.
Let's
> hope Yahoo fixes this.
>
> -Bill Kearney

In other words, you agree they are not doing anything wrong, but you
are exercising your right to complain anyway ;)

Randy
http://www.kbcafe.com

--- In RSS2-Support@yahoogroups.com, "Bill Kearney" <ml_yahoo@i...>
wrote:
> It's also important to consider the "don't set a bad example"
angle.  It
> sets the development of tools back to have a major provider of
data ignore
> bandwidth management issues.  While they may have cycles to burn
for pushing
> the data, not everyone has it when retrieving.  When someone on a
slow link
> in a developing country, a cell phone or other resource-limited
connection
> tries to see if it's different they end up wasting a lot of
bandwidth if
> connection negotiation is ignored.
>
> Sure, it's an additional server-side effort to compare the
incoming request
> headers against the database.  And in yahoo's case that might not
be an
> inconsiderable amount of CPU.  But it doesn't change the fact it
needlessly
> burdens the requestor with repeated downloading of unchanged
data.  Let's
> hope Yahoo fixes this.
>
> -Bill Kearney

I've just finished writing a aggregator that delivers RSS to Outlook:
http://rsspopper.blogspot.com/

More information can be found there (less than I want, it seems that
writing documentation is realy time consuming).

Anyone know where to post problems with My Yahoo RSS ?

I've got feeds that sporadically show up and disappear even though the
content is fine on the RSS server that is serving it up.


Graeme

FAQ - http://my.yahoo.com/s/rss-faq.html#sharefdbk
Hope this helps,

Randy
http://www.kbcafe.com

--- In RSS2-Support@yahoogroups.com, "Graeme Wallace"
<graeme.wallace@x> wrote:
>
> Anyone know where to post problems with My Yahoo RSS ?
>
> I've got feeds that sporadically show up and disappear even though
the
> content is fine on the RSS server that is serving it up.
>
>
> Graeme

Hi,
if I publish newsfeeds the first time everything goes alright and aggregators
retrieve them. But what do I do next? How do I add a fresh news?
I tried to insert a new
<item>
....
</item>

- did not work. I tried to change also the lastbuilddate to smth like 5 mins ago
- did not work. I tried to change pubdate - did not work :(

What am I to do?

--
Alexei Shilin
Gentoo
Opera 7.54

What exactly "did not work" about it? What aggregator are you using?
Have you tried downloading the file with a browser? Have you tried
submitting the feed to feedvalidator.org?

Did the aggregator appear to download the new file? Did it download
and not see a new item? Did it not download at all?

Are you just editing the file on your host system? This *should*
work. But of course that is why you posted, eh?

Greg Smith
Author, FeederReader - The Pocket PC RSS reader and podcatcher
www.FeederReader.com

--- In RSS2-Support@yahoogroups.com, "Alexei Shilin"
<shilin_rassylki@l...> wrote:
> Hi,
> if I publish newsfeeds the first time everything goes alright and
aggregators retrieve them. But what do I do next? How do I add a
fresh news?
> I tried to insert a new
> <item>
> ....
> </item>
>
> - did not work. I tried to change also the lastbuilddate to smth
like 5 mins ago - did not work. I tried to change pubdate - did not
work :(
>
> What am I to do?
>
> --
> Alexei Shilin
> Gentoo
> Opera 7.54

>
> What exactly "did not work" about it? What aggregator are you using?
> Have you tried downloading the file with a browser? Have you tried
> submitting the feed to feedvalidator.org?
>
> Did the aggregator appear to download the new file? Did it download
> and not see a new item? Did it not download at all?
>
> Are you just editing the file on your host system? This *should*
> work. But of course that is why you posted, eh?
>

Thanks, I took a different template this time and used rss 2.0 and it works fine
at the moment.

Thank you for response.

--
Alexei Shilin
Gentoo
Opera 7.54

Hi,

I am the author of the track2rss project (http://track2rss.sf.net)
which lets you track packages via RSS 2.0 feeds (Fedex, USPS and
UPS).
I have been having problems with my feeds not refreshing in Bloglines
but working fine in FireFox. The feed in question is here:

http://www.shaftek.org/code/track2rss/track2rss.pl?
type=ups&tracking_number=1Z9R8A830327349416

The feed validates through FeedValidator just fine. My suspicion now
centers around the pubdate and lastBuild elements of channel, and the
pubdate element of item. What I am wondering is whether any of these
elements are in fact required by aggregators in order to check feeds
more often (the RSS 2.0 spec they are not).

Thanks,
Yakov

Although the pubDate and lastBuildDate are not required, often RSS
readers/aggregators will use these as hints to determine if the feed
or items within the feed have changed. For instance, if the
lastBuildDate remains the same, then the reader/aggregator may assume
the feed has not changed and stop processing. I'm not familiar with
the internals of either Firefox or Bloglines to tell you how they
might be handling these elements.
I hope this helps,

Randy Charles Morin
http://www.kbcafe.com

--- In RSS2-Support@yahoogroups.com, yakovs <no_reply@y...> wrote:
>
> Hi,
>
> I am the author of the track2rss project (http://track2rss.sf.net)
> which lets you track packages via RSS 2.0 feeds (Fedex, USPS and
> UPS).
> I have been having problems with my feeds not refreshing in
Bloglines
> but working fine in FireFox. The feed in question is here:
>
> http://www.shaftek.org/code/track2rss/track2rss.pl?
> type=ups&tracking_number=1Z9R8A830327349416
>
> The feed validates through FeedValidator just fine. My suspicion
now
> centers around the pubdate and lastBuild elements of channel, and
the
> pubdate element of item. What I am wondering is whether any of
these
> elements are in fact required by aggregators in order to check
feeds
> more often (the RSS 2.0 spec they are not).
>
> Thanks,
> Yakov

I can't vouch for other aggregators, but FeederReader parses all
feeds that are downloaded. It does not look at lastBuildDate at all.
It uses pubDate of individual items to determine the relative age of
the items and give a byline of "6 hours ago by Greg Smith on
FeederReader Blog". It uses the relative age of items to optionally
determine viewing order. This is not foolproof because of the clock
difference between different producers' machines. I frequently see
feeds that are published, according to pubDate, in the future. The
New York Times feed is especially guilty of this; they seem to force
pubDate to midnight, yet actually put the feed up an hour or two
early. I would recommend against this practice.

I find that the pubDate is very useful when reading posts, and I
would strongly encourage its use within each item of your feed.

For examples of what the byline looks like in FeederReader, see the
screen shot on the front page of www.FeederReader.com with an
additional screen shot of a byline on the "Enclosure Support" page.


Greg Smith
Author, FeederReader - The Pocket PC RSS reader and podcatcher
www.FeederReader.com


--- In RSS2-Support@yahoogroups.com, "Randy Morin" <randy@k...>
wrote:
>
> Although the pubDate and lastBuildDate are not required, often RSS
> readers/aggregators will use these as hints to determine if the
feed
> or items within the feed have changed. For instance, if the
> lastBuildDate remains the same, then the reader/aggregator may
assume
> the feed has not changed and stop processing. I'm not familiar
with
> the internals of either Firefox or Bloglines to tell you how they
> might be handling these elements.
> I hope this helps,
>
> Randy Charles Morin
> http://www.kbcafe.com
>
> --- In RSS2-Support@yahoogroups.com, yakovs <no_reply@y...> wrote:
> >
> > Hi,
> >
> > I am the author of the track2rss project
(http://track2rss.sf.net)
> > which lets you track packages via RSS 2.0 feeds (Fedex, USPS and
> > UPS).
> > I have been having problems with my feeds not refreshing in
> Bloglines
> > but working fine in FireFox. The feed in question is here:
> >
> > http://www.shaftek.org/code/track2rss/track2rss.pl?
> > type=ups&tracking_number=1Z9R8A830327349416
> >
> > The feed validates through FeedValidator just fine. My suspicion
> now
> > centers around the pubdate and lastBuild elements of channel,
and
> the
> > pubdate element of item. What I am wondering is whether any of
> these
> > elements are in fact required by aggregators in order to check
> feeds
> > more often (the RSS 2.0 spec they are not).
> >
> > Thanks,
> > Yakov

Hi:

I'm new and would like to know if anyone can help me out with a RSS
problem.  I'm trying to embed the following HTML code into my RSS
feed.  I can do this by adding it to an article I plan to post on my
Blog.

<script language=JavaScript src=http://www.story.com/abm.asp?
z=1></script>

Using front page I converted the HTML script above into XML, see XML
conversion below.

<script language="JavaScript" src="http://www.story.com/abm.asp?
z=1"></script>

When I apply the code to a Blog article, I get the following error
message:

2005-02-01
Invalid post, please correct these errors:
Illegal tag: script Can anyone here tell me how to fix this error?

Thanks.

Thank you.

In my case it seems to be a BlogLines-specific problems since the
other aggregators I tried out are working fine.

--- In RSS2-Support@yahoogroups.com, "Randy Morin" <randy@k...> wrote:
>
> Although the pubDate and lastBuildDate are not required, often RSS
> readers/aggregators will use these as hints to determine if the feed
> or items within the feed have changed. For instance, if the
> lastBuildDate remains the same, then the reader/aggregator may
assume
> the feed has not changed and stop processing. I'm not familiar with
> the internals of either Firefox or Bloglines to tell you how they
> might be handling these elements.
> I hope this helps,
>
> Randy Charles Morin
> http://www.kbcafe.com
>
> --- In RSS2-Support@yahoogroups.com, yakovs <no_reply@y...> wrote:
> >
> > Hi,
> >
> > I am the author of the track2rss project (http://track2rss.sf.net)
> > which lets you track packages via RSS 2.0 feeds (Fedex, USPS and
> > UPS).
> > I have been having problems with my feeds not refreshing in
> Bloglines
> > but working fine in FireFox. The feed in question is here:
> >
> > http://www.shaftek.org/code/track2rss/track2rss.pl?
> > type=ups&tracking_number=1Z9R8A830327349416
> >
> > The feed validates through FeedValidator just fine. My suspicion
> now
> > centers around the pubdate and lastBuild elements of channel, and
> the
> > pubdate element of item. What I am wondering is whether any of
> these
> > elements are in fact required by aggregators in order to check
> feeds
> > more often (the RSS 2.0 spec they are not).
> >
> > Thanks,
> > Yakov

A question: what happens if there is not pubData OR lastBuiltDate?
According to the RSS 2.0 spec it seems that they are not required
elements.

In my case, since this data is coming out of UPS/Fedex/USPS systems I
cannot put a normal lastBuildDate in (unless I set it to the current
date). As for pubData, I can probably convert the date/time given to
me by UPS/Fedex/etc. but they are often in local time depending on
where the package was. In those cases, the times may vary greatly.

Yakov

--- In RSS2-Support@yahoogroups.com, "ecomputerd" <ecomputerd@y...>
wrote:
>
> I can't vouch for other aggregators, but FeederReader parses all
> feeds that are downloaded. It does not look at lastBuildDate at all.
> It uses pubDate of individual items to determine the relative age of
> the items and give a byline of "6 hours ago by Greg Smith on
> FeederReader Blog". It uses the relative age of items to optionally
> determine viewing order. This is not foolproof because of the clock
> difference between different producers' machines. I frequently see
> feeds that are published, according to pubDate, in the future. The
> New York Times feed is especially guilty of this; they seem to force
> pubDate to midnight, yet actually put the feed up an hour or two
> early. I would recommend against this practice.
>
> I find that the pubDate is very useful when reading posts, and I
> would strongly encourage its use within each item of your feed.
>
> For examples of what the byline looks like in FeederReader, see the
> screen shot on the front page of www.FeederReader.com with an
> additional screen shot of a byline on the "Enclosure Support" page.
>
>
> Greg Smith
> Author, FeederReader - The Pocket PC RSS reader and podcatcher
> www.FeederReader.com
>
>
> --- In RSS2-Support@yahoogroups.com, "Randy Morin" <randy@k...>
> wrote:
> >
> > Although the pubDate and lastBuildDate are not required, often RSS
> > readers/aggregators will use these as hints to determine if the
> feed
> > or items within the feed have changed. For instance, if the
> > lastBuildDate remains the same, then the reader/aggregator may
> assume
> > the feed has not changed and stop processing. I'm not familiar
> with
> > the internals of either Firefox or Bloglines to tell you how they
> > might be handling these elements.
> > I hope this helps,
> >
> > Randy Charles Morin
> > http://www.kbcafe.com
> >
> > --- In RSS2-Support@yahoogroups.com, yakovs <no_reply@y...> wrote:
> > >
> > > Hi,
> > >
> > > I am the author of the track2rss project
> (http://track2rss.sf.net)
> > > which lets you track packages via RSS 2.0 feeds (Fedex, USPS and
> > > UPS).
> > > I have been having problems with my feeds not refreshing in
> > Bloglines
> > > but working fine in FireFox. The feed in question is here:
> > >
> > > http://www.shaftek.org/code/track2rss/track2rss.pl?
> > > type=ups&tracking_number=1Z9R8A830327349416
> > >
> > > The feed validates through FeedValidator just fine. My suspicion
> > now
> > > centers around the pubdate and lastBuild elements of channel,
> and
> > the
> > > pubdate element of item. What I am wondering is whether any of
> > these
> > > elements are in fact required by aggregators in order to check
> > feeds
> > > more often (the RSS 2.0 spec they are not).
> > >
> > > Thanks,
> > > Yakov

I think the lastBuildDate is very appropriate for the current time
when the RSS file is created. I would hope that any aggregator
developer would design their program to be independent of the
difference in time between the producer's and consumer's machine. In
the case of lastBuildDate, this would mean (the aggregator)
comparing the lastBuildDate to the previous lastBuildDate obtained
and not to any date/time derived from the consumer's machine. That
is, if the lastBuildDate is used at all.

The pubDate (in RSS 2.0) is in the format of RFC882
http://asg.web.cmu.edu/rfc/rfc822.html with a preferred 4-digit
year, and includes a timezone. FeederReader correctly parses the
timezone of a feed and converts it to local time (the timezone
indicated by the device) upon display. If you could get the proper
timezone in there, FeederReader would make the display really nice
for those not in the timezone of the destination. 1) I don't know if
this is useful for you, 2) I don't know what other aggregators
display.

If pubDate is not included in an item, FeederReader uses the
date/time of download, which is usually much less useful. (I also
include display "DL" before the age to specify that this was based
on the "DownLoad" date/time and not a pubDate.)

For your application, I would consider making the title of each item
display very useful information as some aggregators might make it
easy to see the titles as a group, but split the individual items on
separate pages.

Greg Smith
Author, FeederReader - The Pocket PC RSS reader and podcatcher
Catches video, too!
www.FeederReader.com

--- In RSS2-Support@yahoogroups.com, yakovs <no_reply@y...> wrote:
>
> A question: what happens if there is not pubData OR lastBuiltDate?
> According to the RSS 2.0 spec it seems that they are not required
> elements.
>
> In my case, since this data is coming out of UPS/Fedex/USPS
systems I
> cannot put a normal lastBuildDate in (unless I set it to the
current
> date). As for pubData, I can probably convert the date/time given
to
> me by UPS/Fedex/etc. but they are often in local time depending on
> where the package was. In those cases, the times may vary greatly.
>
> Yakov
>
> --- In RSS2-Support@yahoogroups.com, "ecomputerd"
<ecomputerd@y...>
> wrote:
> >
> > I can't vouch for other aggregators, but FeederReader parses all
> > feeds that are downloaded. It does not look at lastBuildDate at
all.
> > It uses pubDate of individual items to determine the relative
age of
> > the items and give a byline of "6 hours ago by Greg Smith on
> > FeederReader Blog". It uses the relative age of items to
optionally
> > determine viewing order. This is not foolproof because of the
clock
> > difference between different producers' machines. I frequently
see
> > feeds that are published, according to pubDate, in the future.
The
> > New York Times feed is especially guilty of this; they seem to
force
> > pubDate to midnight, yet actually put the feed up an hour or two
> > early. I would recommend against this practice.
> >
> > I find that the pubDate is very useful when reading posts, and I
> > would strongly encourage its use within each item of your feed.
> >
> > For examples of what the byline looks like in FeederReader, see
the
> > screen shot on the front page of www.FeederReader.com with an
> > additional screen shot of a byline on the "Enclosure Support"
page.
> >
> >
> > Greg Smith
> > Author, FeederReader - The Pocket PC RSS reader and podcatcher
> > www.FeederReader.com
> >
> >
> > --- In RSS2-Support@yahoogroups.com, "Randy Morin" <randy@k...>
> > wrote:
> > >
> > > Although the pubDate and lastBuildDate are not required, often
RSS
> > > readers/aggregators will use these as hints to determine if
the
> > feed
> > > or items within the feed have changed. For instance, if the
> > > lastBuildDate remains the same, then the reader/aggregator may
> > assume
> > > the feed has not changed and stop processing. I'm not familiar
> > with
> > > the internals of either Firefox or Bloglines to tell you how
they
> > > might be handling these elements.
> > > I hope this helps,
> > >
> > > Randy Charles Morin
> > > http://www.kbcafe.com
> > >
> > > --- In RSS2-Support@yahoogroups.com, yakovs <no_reply@y...>
wrote:
> > > >
> > > > Hi,
> > > >
> > > > I am the author of the track2rss project
> > (http://track2rss.sf.net)
> > > > which lets you track packages via RSS 2.0 feeds (Fedex, USPS
and
> > > > UPS).
> > > > I have been having problems with my feeds not refreshing in
> > > Bloglines
> > > > but working fine in FireFox. The feed in question is here:
> > > >
> > > > http://www.shaftek.org/code/track2rss/track2rss.pl?
> > > > type=ups&tracking_number=1Z9R8A830327349416
> > > >
> > > > The feed validates through FeedValidator just fine. My
suspicion
> > > now
> > > > centers around the pubdate and lastBuild elements of
channel,
> > and
> > > the
> > > > pubdate element of item. What I am wondering is whether any
of
> > > these
> > > > elements are in fact required by aggregators in order to
check
> > > feeds
> > > > more often (the RSS 2.0 spec they are not).
> > > >
> > > > Thanks,
> > > > Yakov

From: "yakovs" <no_reply@yahoogroups.com>
> A question: what happens if there is not pubData OR lastBuiltDate?
> According to the RSS 2.0 spec it seems that they are not required
> elements.

The spec is widely considered "less than ideal".  If you need to use a more
refined spec you'd do well to look at RSS-1.0.

> In my case, since this data is coming out of UPS/Fedex/USPS systems I
> cannot put a normal lastBuildDate in (unless I set it to the current
> date). As for pubData, I can probably convert the date/time given to
> me by UPS/Fedex/etc. but they are often in local time depending on
> where the package was. In those cases, the times may vary greatly.

If you're pulling the data at a given interval and caching the data it might
be worth considering use of that timestamp for a build date.  It's critical
to get as good a set of data as possible.  If you're talking about making
something useful for folks don't fall short on handling date info.

=Bill Kearney
Syndic8.com

scorpiusb2000 wrote:
> I'm new and would like to know if anyone can help me out with a RSS
> problem.  I'm trying to embed the following HTML code into my RSS
> feed.  I can do this by adding it to an article I plan to post on my
> Blog.
>
> <script language=JavaScript src=http://www.story.com/abm.asp?
> z=1></script>

You can't embed scripts into RSS feeds.   Most, if not all, readers
won't use it.  For many reasons the most important being security.  The
main reason most users don't want it is there's next to nothing about
the user reading experience that will EVER be helped by letting a site
embed scripting into their RSS feeds.  Do whatever you like on the HTML
pages but RSS won't allow it.

-Bill Kearney
Syndic8.com

I need a bit of info here.  I have currently gotten 14562 hits from a
number of RSS news aggregators.  Can any one here give me a general
idea as to how many people are reading my articles?  Example: msnbot
has picked up my RSS feed 2997 time.  What is MSN doing with the info?

Scorpius--

Maybe I'm just crazy. But I can't seem to get my rss file to open.

www.lcr-mi.org/rss.php

I keep getting:

Parse error: parse error, unexpected T_STRING in /home/lcr-
mior/public_html/rss.php on line 1


Any ideas? Thanks.

That's a PHP problem with your program, not with the RSS feed it
generates.

--- In RSS2-Support@yahoogroups.com, "lxa1801" <greg@g...> wrote:
>
> Maybe I'm just crazy. But I can't seem to get my rss file to open.
>
> www.lcr-mi.org/rss.php
>
> I keep getting:
>
> Parse error: parse error, unexpected T_STRING in /home/lcr-
> mior/public_html/rss.php on line 1
>
>
> Any ideas? Thanks.

<enclosure
url="http://beta.schecter.biz/DesktopModules/NukeSyndicate/download.aspx?mid=368\
&id=8"
length="3331055" type="audio/mpeg"></Enclosure>

Now my question is the validator complains obviously about the = and
it will then the & I assume, but if these are needed in the url do I
need to xml encode those? And if so will it still translate into the
correct url? Thanks

Anytime you use an atttribute or element value you need to follow XML's
rules.  For URLs you should HTML encode them.  This is true for any URL not
just for enclosures.  While some characters are not problems for XML (the
slashes, for example) it's the & ampersand character that's tripping things
up.  It's not the = equal sign.  The error is slightly misleading in that
the parser sees the & and expects there to be a valid XML entity reference
following it.  The equal sign isn't a valid follower and thus the error.

-Bill Kearney
Syndic8.com

----- Original Message -----
From: "AerosSaga" <aeros_saga@...>
>
> <enclosure
>
url="http://beta.schecter.biz/DesktopModules/NukeSyndicate/download.aspx?mid
=368&id=8"
> length="3331055" type="audio/mpeg"></Enclosure>
>
> Now my question is the validator complains obviously about the = and
> it will then the & I assume, but if these are needed in the url do I
> need to xml encode those? And if so will it still translate into the
> correct url? Thanks

I'm about to start a new Blog with an RSS feed, and I'd appreciate
some guidance. If I update an article, should I update the original
<item> with a new <pubDate>, create a new <item> and leave the old
one alone, or do both?

Thanks
Andrew Johnston