#6687 Odd guid on RSS feeds

unreleased
closed
Dave Brondsema
None
General
nobody
5 days ago
2013-09-20
Chris Tsai
No

[allura🎟️#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)

Related

Commit: [15efa5]
Commit: [bacea1]

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

     

  • Dave Brondsema

    Dave Brondsema - 5 days ago
    • status: open --> closed
    • assigned_to: Dave Brondsema
     

  • Dave Brondsema

    Dave Brondsema - 5 days ago

    We're now using isPermaLink and changing default links to go to .atom urls so people find Atom feeds rather than RSS feeds going forward. Not changing guid values to avoid any breakages

     

Log in to post a comment.