All the Perl that's Practical to Extract and Report

XML::RSS ... broken.

LTjake on 2003-07-10T14:13:37

After reading Mark's rant on stripping HTML from RSS feeds, i decided to test out my XML::RSS-based aggregator.

Simply adding an <em></em> tag around some text in the <description></description> tag proved interesting. It _ATE_ the text!

This:

<description>I am <em>really not</em> a jerk.</description>

Becomes:

I am a jerk.

when i output it.

Since XML::RSS uses XML::Parser... is it a problem with that? I noticed a callback for Start (called when an XML start tag is found) ... perhaps it's being lost there?

*sigh*

XML::RSS is broken, help fix it

ajt on 2003-07-10T15:20:53

XML::RSS is broken in many ways, though some of it's old bugs have been ironed out. You can help to fix it though, see Perl-RSS where new memebers and ideas are always welcome.

In an ideal world it will be rebuilt from the ground-up, but I don't know when that will happen, I just look after the web site...

Re:XML::RSS is broken, help fix it

LTjake on 2003-07-10T17:23:20

I hear ya. I've already filed one bug report, and on my list of TODOs is to fix it. :)

re: XML::RSS ... broken

aaron of montreal on 2003-07-10T16:36:12

It's actually doing the right thing which is not always the same as DWIM.

Strictly speaking, RSS 0.9x/2.x doesn't allow for anything but a core set of elements. RSS 1.0 should, in theory, via namespaces but it's not something that XML::RSS supports except for a few specific RSS modules. Everything else is ignored.

The artist formerly known as Prince (or whatever it's being called this week) will, in theory, just work but people are still picking at the details. [1]

On the other hand, you can wrap your custom elements in CDATA brackets which is a horrible kludge but then, well, so is RSS...

---

[1] http://norman.walsh.name/2003/07/10/nechoGrammar

Re: XML::RSS ... broken

LTjake on 2003-07-10T17:19:22

My primary concern was having potentially malicious html milling around the description tag -- and, I guess, I don't have to worry about that -- so it's sort of working right. :)