Re: RSS 1.0: problems with feed, validator, CPAN module or specification?

Hello Brian, all.

On Feb 5, 2007, at 16:45 , Brian Kelly wrote:
> My organisation has an RSS 1.0 news feed -
> http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/news/feed/rss/
>
> When we validate this against the Feedvalidator hosted at W3C we  
> get an
> error:
>
> line 26, column 0: Undefined channel element: taxo:topics [help]
>     <taxo:topics>
> http://validator.w3.org/feed/check.cgi?url=http%3A%2F% 
> 2Fwww.ukoln.ac.uk%2Fne
> ws%2Ffeed%2Frss%2F
>
> I've been trying to get this fixed, but it has proved difficult to  
> track
> down the root cause.

There are, as you mention, a number of problems, but ultimately I  
think there was a bug in the feed validator.



> It was pointed out to me that the RSS 1.0 taxonomy specification is  
> flawed
> i.e. the example at
> http://web.resource.org/rss/1.0/modules/taxonomy/
> contains invalid XML.

Yes, the examples appear to not even be well-formed.
I'm copying Dan, whom I know was involved in the spec - Dan, could  
you bring that to the RSS-Dev group's attention?

> We don't know if the problem is:
>
>   1 In our feed

Your feed appears to be fine. I see that its content-type is  
application/xml. While this is what the spec over at http:// 
web.resource.org/rss/1.0/spec says, I think the recommended media  
type is "application/rdf+xml", since RSS1.0 and 1.1 are RDF. Other  
than that, I think your feed is fine.

>   2 In the module used to create the feed

Faultless AFAICT.

>   3 In the RSS 1.0 Taxonomy specification

The examples are wrong. Can't say anything about the rest of the spec.

>   4 In the validator itself.

There is a bug here, I think.

The spec at
http://web.resource.org/rss/1.0/modules/taxonomy/
mentions that the element <taxo:topics> "may be included in channel,  
item or taxo:topic" elements. The feed validator, however, appears to  
only recognize it within <item>.

I am not enough of an expert in RSS or its modules, but I think the  
attached patch for the feed validator's code and test case should  
improve the situation (not entirely though, it would, I think, make  
<taxo:topics> authorized within <item> and <channel> but not  
<taxo:topic>). I'm copying the feedvalidator list so that the patch  
can be reviewed.

Thanks,
-- 
olivier Thereaux - W3C - http://www.w3.org/People/olivier/
W3C Open Source Software: http://www.w3.org/Status