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ribbons / RadioDownloader

An easy to use application for managing podcast subscriptions and downloads.
https://nerdoftheherd.com/tools/radiodld/
GNU General Public License v3.0
15 stars 11 forks source link

Removed requirement for podcast feeds to have a channel description node. #172

Closed ribbons closed 11 years ago

ribbons commented 11 years ago

Original report from weegem@gmail.com at 19:14:43 on 2012-04-15

Radio Downloader reports an error when given this URL in the Podcast Provider http://feeds.feedburner.com/SN/MarekVsWyshynski Error is "The RSS feed returned from the specified URL was not valid"

Other podcast/RSS apps I use are able to handle it (Google Reader, Opera, Blackberry Podcasts, Podtrapper)

Imported from Bug 641 in the NerdoftheHerd.com Bugzilla.

ribbons commented 11 years ago

Original comment from Matt Robinson at 13:11:01 on 2012-06-14

The reason that this is being flagged up as invalid is that the channel node is missing a description (which is specified as required in the RSS spec: http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/rss/rss.html#requiredChannelElements ).

However, as Radio Downloader doesn't actually need to have a description for a programme, I should be able to work around this by just removing the requirement.

The feed is what I'd politely describe as messed up - missing required nodes, contains duplicate nodes, incorrect namespace URLs, etc. It is a testament to how much extra leg-work the other feed readers you mention do to actually manage to handle the feed without choking:

http://validator.w3.org/appc/check.cgi?url=http%3A%2F%2Ffeeds.feedburner.com%2FSN%2FMarekVsWyshynski

ribbons commented 11 years ago

Original comment from Matt Robinson at 14:20:37 on 2012-06-14

Removed requirement for channel description node in 6e2996e. Sorry it took me so long to address this.

Also improved channel and item description handling by looking for an itunes:summary node first (which shouldn't contain HTML), and then falling back to using the contents of the description node with tags removed.

Sadly in the case of the Marek vs Wyshynski feed, the channel and item itunes:summary tags can't be found by Radio Downloader due to a case error in the itunes namespace declaration (sigh), but the changes should prove beneficial to other feeds.

Do you fancy dropping them an email to suggest that their podcast feed would benefit from a little TLC, or shall I?