#6687 Odd guid on RSS feeds

unreleased
open
nobody
None
General
nobody
2015-02-24
2013-09-20
Chris Tsai
No

[allura:tickets:#5423]

On our RSS feeds, we have weird GUID values.

eg. from https://sourceforge.net/p/mailredirect/news/feed we have:

<guid>https://sourceforge.netb6756a9295b4d4377fa50aa0064472d39d940369</guid>

According to http://www.w3schools.com/rss/rss_tag_guid.asp this doesn't seem to be strictly wrong, but it is a bit odd. And some RSS readers (like Thunderbird) reportedly use that instead of the <link> element when they try to link to the page.

UPDATE: User contacted Thunderbird help, and they indicated that according to spec, the "isPermaLink" attribute, which we haven't set, defaults to True. Hence it's actually not wrong to assume the <guid> is a link. So, we need to either set "isPermaLink" to false, or change the guids (which could cause a one-time annoyance of the RSS items showing up again as "new" if/when the guid changes)

Discussion

  • Dave Brondsema

    Dave Brondsema - 2013-09-20

    When we fix this, we should try to preserve the original guids for existing news items, so that feed readers don't consider all the items new again.

     

  • Chris Tsai - 2013-09-23
    • Description has changed:

    Diff:

    --- old
+++ new
@@ -1,3 +1,5 @@
+[allura:tickets:#5423]
+
 On our RSS feeds, we have weird GUID values.

 eg. from https://sourceforge.net/p/mailredirect/news/feed we have:
@@ -7,3 +9,5 @@
 ~~~~

 According to http://www.w3schools.com/rss/rss_tag_guid.asp this doesn't seem to be strictly *wrong*, but it is a bit odd. And some RSS readers (like Thunderbird) reportedly use that instead of the `<link>` element when they try to link to the page.
+
+UPDATE: User contacted Thunderbird help, and they indicated that according to spec, the "isPermaLink" attribute, which we haven't set, defaults to True. Hence it's actually *not* wrong to assume the `<guid>` is a link. So, we need to either set "isPermaLink" to false, or change the guids (which could cause a one-time annoyance of the RSS items showing up again as "new" if/when the guid changes)
     

  • Anonymous - 2014-02-16

    Originally by: delphidabbler

    This bug also causes probs in FeedBurner which (correctly) uses the GUID element as a link.

    The RSS spec confirms the info you have from Thunderbird help. See http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/rss/rss.html#ltguidgtSubelementOfLtitemgt

     

Log in to post a comment.