On Jun 19, 2007, at 3:36 PM, Boris Mann wrote:
On 6/19/07, Larry Garfield <larry@garfieldtech.com> wrote:
Disclaimer: I am not an RSS guru, just a pedant. :-)
RSS is XML. The XML spec explicitly says that invalid files should be discarded, not guessed at the way HTML is. Trying to make sense of a broken RSS feed is explicitly contrary to the spec. So, er, why are we spending so much time trying to sanitize? If it doesn't parse correctly, report an error "this site's RSS feed is f*ed up, tell 'em to fix it". Am I missing something here?
This is another +1 for a pluggable parser approach. Then you (site admin) can decide on a case by case basis whether to use the parser that handles it all or only valid. So maybe validation is done in the main module and your plugin parser can flip that switch on and off whether to proceed at own will when validation fails. Either way, you can do it either way w/ plugability.
And this is the point where I dive back in....
Many many many people have argued this.
Fact: many non proper XML RSS feeds exist in the wild. Fact: if Drupal doesn't parse it, when other applications do, Drupal looks "broken" Fact: regular people like stuff that "just works" with any RSS feed out there, and will pick that over XML pedantry every day.
A checkbox for "discard invalid XML" makes perfect sense....for *some feeds* and *some use cases*.
-- Boris Mann Office 604-682-2889 Skype borismann http://www.bryght.com
Ian Ward Development Seed Inc. Technology Development and Discovery http://www.developmentseed.org http://www.developmentseed.org/blog developmentseedperu(skype) Tel. 202.250.3633 Fax. 806.214.6218