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API: timestamp questions, feature request, and an error. #100

Open Zegnat opened 11 years ago

Zegnat commented 11 years ago

Question

An entry contains published and created_at timestamps. It would be good if the API included clarifications on what exactly these are. Something like:

I am guessing created_at is the time Feedbin first indexed it?

Feature request

And then I am wondering about timestamps for updates. This is especially important for feed reader software that wants to alert the reader when an item has been changed. This information is not supplied by Feedbin at all but would be great if it was.

Some people believe changing pubDate indicates an update (RSS) and ATOM has the updated element to consider.

Could Feedbin implement an updated-field? Either providing the latest timestamp string or an array of all different timestamps Feedbin has seen.

We can take the second entry (ID 10250043) of Jason Scott’s blog (ID 430) as example. Compare the feed entry with the API entry:

        <updated>2013-04-30T19:19:41Z</updated>
        <published>2013-04-30T19:18:34Z</published>
        "published": "2013-04-30T19:18:34.000000Z",
        "created_at": "2013-04-30T19:43:43.525673Z"

Could Feedbin add an updated field to the API?

        "published": "2013-04-30T19:18:34.000000Z",
        "updated": "2013-04-30T19:19:41.000000Z",
        "created_at": "2013-04-30T19:43:43.525673Z"

Error?

When digging in Jason’s feed I saw the latest entry (10816501). Compare the feed…

        <updated>2013-05-01T17:11:35Z</updated>
        <published>2013-05-01T16:32:34Z</published>

… with the Feedbin API:

        "published": "2013-04-29T16:32:34.000000Z",
        "created_at": "2013-05-01T17:10:41.726161Z"

The published date is a couple of days off. Even though the time is right.

benubois commented 11 years ago

I am guessing created_at is the time Feedbin first indexed it?

Correct.

Could Feedbin add an updated field to the API?

Currently Feedbin does not save the updated date, but I suppose a column for this information could be added in the future.

When digging in Jason’s feed I saw the latest entry (10816501). Compare the feed…

This one is hard to debug. In general the dates in Feedbin seem pretty accurate. Dates are parsed using Ruby's Time.parse and in your example this gives me:

Time.parse '2013-05-01T16:32:34Z'
# => 2013-05-01 16:32:34 UTC

Which looks right. The only thing I can think of is the published date was changed later.