Thursday work notes

[scripting]

Okay this is something I always planned to do -- and I decided that now was the time to do it -- Categories.

The work touched on almost every part of the product, the feed list, the home page, the database, news products, OPML. And it all came together very smoothly.

Everything that was there before still works. You can still do includes in news products, and manage your lists in outlines, but there's also a totally interactive way to do it, and I'm already using it, happily. :smile:

Okay enough on the status.

Here are the docs.

http://docs.feedland.org/categories.opml

I'll post a few screen shots of the highlights in a comment below.

Important caveat -- there will be edge cases that don't work properly, and there will be features that worked on my machine that don't work on yours. This is brand new software, and that's what happens. Please under no circumstances should you panic. :boom:

[scripting]

A section of the feed list with a new icon that leads to the categories dialog.

The categories dialog

My home page

[scotthansonde]

When loading http://feedland.org/ I get an error dialog "There was an error communicating with the server"

[scripting]

@scotthansonde -- i assume you haven't done anything with categories. is that true?

[scotthansonde]

@scripting This is true, I haven't done anything with categories yet.

[scripting]

@scotthansonde -- i can't reproduce this problem. i have an account, cluelessnewbie, that has done nothing with categories and it's working when I go to http://feedland.org/?river

What are the steps to reproduce?

[scripting]

Why are you using Incognito mode? That could be the problem.

[scotthansonde]

I get the error both in my normal Chrome browser and in Incognito mode (to rule out bad cache or cookies or whatever).

The steps

• Enter http://feedland.org/ in the URL bar
• The page seems to redirect to http://feedland.org/?river
• The error appears.

Here are my settings. I can try changing them to see if it makes any difference.

[scripting]

Looking at the server logs and I see some SQL errors.

Unfortunately it doesn't say what the errant text is. :smile:

I have to take a break, this a very big mode-shift -- so it'll be a little while before I can do more investigation on this.

[scotthansonde]

@scripting That's fine, it's end of the day here for me, so I'll take another look tomorrow. 😄

[scripting]

@scotthansonde -- I was able to reproduce the problem here. I'll explain in the next comment.

[scripting]

While this feature was in development, I changed my mind about the initial value of appPrefs.categoryList.

Until yesterday, this is what it was: All, Business, Podcasts, Sports

I thought wouldn't it be nice if the first time they used the checkboxes they saw some actual categories there.

Then it became clear that wouldn't work (at the moment I forget why).

So I changed the default value to the empty string.

But clearly you logged in when the default value was the earlier one, and that's what got into your appPrefs.

I could see that by taking a look at your appPrefs.json file, it's sitting there on the server, and there are no passwords or other private data in it, so I took a look, and sure enough that's what was there.

So I manually changed the value for cluelessnewbie, and voila, it got the same result. So the problem is reproducible.

Now to figure out what the fix is. ;-)

[scripting]

@scotthansonde et al

I have implemented a fix.

Next time you try it, it should work.

Knock wood, praise Murphy, etc.

Please confirm one way or the other. :smile:

[akaKenSmith]

In the last couple of minutes, the tabs I could previously see and use in the News area have disappeared. I have the river but not the tabs I expected to see because there were there a half hour or so ago.

I went into settings and saw that the category list had been erased. (But not the Home list--that was still there.) I reentered the categories and went back to the news area, expecting to see the tabs back. No tabs.

I went back to the settings area and the category list had again been erased.

Developer area, hard reload and empty cache, same result. In red there, a 404 error in trying to fetch the icon for the Guardian, I believe.

[scotthansonde]

@scripting I had closed my MacBook for the evening, but my curiosity got the better of me. 😄 http://feedland.org/?river now works as expected, and I no longer have any categories pre-defined. 👍

I'll wait until tomorrow to set up any categories.

[scripting]

@akaKenSmith -- that was the fix for Scott. I didn't know you had started using it, you didn't tell me. It won't happen again, that was a one-time thing.

[akaKenSmith]

@akaKenSmith -- that was the fix for Scott. I didn't know you had started using it, you didn't tell me. It won't happen again, that was a one-time thing.

Tabs are back in service, as expected. Thanks.

[troutcolor]

Just added a few tabs this evening (after the changes). Works as described. Very nice.

[scripting]

@troutcolor and @akaKenSmith -- thanks for the confirmation.

[scotthansonde]

I am now getting an error when trying to add a feed (https://talkingpointsmemo.com/feed)

• Go to my feeds page http://feedland.org/?username=ScottHansonDE
• Click the "+ Feed" to add a single feed
• Enter "https://talkingpointsmemo.com/feed"
• The error message "socket hang up" is displayed

[scripting]

@scotthansonde -- that happens when the server has an error and has to restart.

I saw it happen here too, and wasn't sure what caused it -- now I know.

The categories stuff in the database is new, in the last few days, and there are still some error conditions it doesn't catch.

[scripting]

@scotthansonde -- okay -- I found the source of the crash and covered it.

However your initial subscription to the feed worked, so doing it again won't test this case.

But I'm pretty sure of the fix.

Thanks for the excellent report.

[scripting]

The OPML for a category got better.

The first release of this new code didn't have the title of the feeds or any of the other metadata.

This made it difficult to tell just from the feed's URL, in some cases, to figure out what the feed contained.

Here's an example.

http://feedland.org/opml?screenname=davewiner&catname=nyt

Much better. ;-)