RSS feeds not validating

[tomdebruin]

There's an issue with RSS feeds not validating. The problem appears to stem from » in the titles (rss.php) so I swapped them all with ::.
It now validates. It did work fine in Safari, but Firefox and IE threw up errors.

e.g. ​http://validator.w3.org/feed/check.cgi?url=http%3A%2F%2Fbbpress.org%2Fforums%2Frss%2Ftopic%2Fcall-for-testers-on-the-09-branch-and-10-trunk

There's also a recommendation to not use <textInput>.

[sambauers]

(In [2374]) Put the RSS feed description into CDATA. Fixes #1181

[Nightgunner5]

Suggestion: Change all » to » (and other non-numeric entities to their numeric counterpart)

[_ck_]

I would highly suggest a better solution than CDATA (which is a lazy workaround at best).

CDATA looks ugly in some readers or isn't parsed.
Doesn't bbPress already have a few entity encoding routines from wordpress/backpress? Is CDATA how WordPress solves it?

[sambauers]

Reverses [2374] and implements ent2ncr() via filters.

[chrishajer]

What would be a good way to test this?

[GautamGupta]

When you have applied this patch on your install, then post some entities in your post text like » etc., full list can be found ​here (the left side values), and then check your feed from here - ​http://validator.w3.org/feed/

[chrishajer]

Without the patch, my trunk feed validates. Is there somewhere I can see this feed as invalid? This also mentions "title" not post body.

[GautamGupta]

Did you reverse [2374] on your install?

[chrishajer]

Not explicitly, I don't think. I just applied this patch:
​http://trac.bbpress.org/attachment/ticket/1181/full-rss-filters.patch

Is there more to do?

[GautamGupta]

Nop.

[chrishajer]

I think there are still issues with this one.

1. CDATA is still being used in several places after applying this patch. Check here:

​http://validator.w3.org/feed/check.cgi?url=http%3A%2F%2Fbbpress.chrishajer.com%2Ftrunk%2Frss%2F

If it is a lazy workaround as _ck_ suggests, why isn't it lazy to keep it in these places too? Why not remove it everywhere?

2. Is there a good reason to leave in the <textInput>?

​http://validator.w3.org/feed/docs/warning/AvoidTextInput.html

3. I am getting some weird characters in that feed. It looks like something is converting the opening paragraph tags to

   <p>
   

and closing ones to

</p>

I imagine if I had other HTML in the replies that the open and close (greater and less than) would be converted, incorrectly as well. Also, what about bbcode if the forum allows that? Maybe that's handled properly by being processed first and converted the html, but then I think the < and > would be converted. to 60 and 62

yeah, check this, it's a mess:

​http://validator.w3.org/feed/check.cgi?url=http%3A%2F%2Fbbpress.chrishajer.com%2Ftrunk%2Frss%2Ftopic%2Ftest-time-zone-divide-time

This is not good enough yet I don't think.

[chrishajer]

We could always just remove raquo from all the php files and replace with the numeric entity. Would that resolve this ticket instead of the existing patch? I could test using html and entities in a post and see what happens.

[GautamGupta]

Merging feed tickets into one ticket: #1261

[chrishajer]

(In [2420]) RSS feed validation code changes. (You will need to update any custom theme.) Fixes #1181. Props sambauers, GautamGupta

[GautamGupta]

#1261