September 09, 2004

Xanga RSS Fixer

Since switching to NetNewsWire as my feed reader software of choice, the RSS feeds for my friends with Xanga blogs quit working.

The problem, as it turns out, is that Xanga does not generate correct RSS for their feeds. It does not validate. This is quite unacceptable for a site as large as Xanga, and I've heard that they've been unresponsive to people pointing this out to them.

To fix this, I have written a Perl script that will fix up Xanga feeds to generate well-formed RSS. I'm running the script on my site and anyone who cares to use it is more then welcome to do so:

http://www.joshstaiger.org/XangaRssFixer.pl

Running the script without parameters will present you with a prompt for a Xanga username.

Alternatively, you can pass the user parameter directly. This is the address you would put into a feed reader:

http://www.joshstaiger.org/XangaRssFixer.pl?user=XangaUser

Naturally, we now get a nice happy validation message.

The sourcecode is available here: XangaRssFixer.pl

I'm licensing this under the MIT license so in case Xanga happens to be reading this, they can use it to fix their shizit.

I have also created a project page here which essentially restates what this entry just said.

Enjoy!

In Projects

Posted by Josh Staiger at 11:43 AM

Comments

It appears that both tenets of Postel's Law [0] are being violated. Xanga is not strict in what they send, and NetNewsWire is not liberal in what it accepts. However, having seen NNW's GUI will allow me to forgive it's strictness :) I'm using a reader called SharpReader [1] for the PC, and it seems to handle about half of the Xanga feeds I've subscribed to (which fortunately, are few).

[0]: http://essaysfromexodus.scripting.com/postelsLaw
[1]: http://www.sharpreader.net

Posted by: Kurtiss [TypeKey Profile Page] September 11, 2004 11:39 PM | Permanent link

I used SharpReader as my reader of choice on the PC before buying my PowerBook, and I'm pretty sure that it handled all my Xanga feeds correctly.

There are currently ten Xanga feeds that I'm subscribed to, which brings me to another point. I don't quite understand why my friends insist on using obscene things like Xanga when we have much better alternatives in LiveJournal and Blogger. But there ya go - RSS feeds aren't on most people's radars yet.

Posted by: joshstaiger [TypeKey Profile Page] September 12, 2004 09:48 PM | Permanent link

Hi Josh,

I would have emailed you, but I couldn't find your email address ^^;.

Thanks for such a great script. I was using SharpReader and Xanga feeds used to always choke on them.

Anyway, I wanted to let you know that I did a port of your script over to PHP. I had problems running your perl script on my server so I did a quick rewrite of the script as a class. It works well and you can check it out here:
Xanga RSS Fixer

Posted by: mikexstudios [TypeKey Profile Page] October 17, 2004 08:36 PM | Permanent link

Thanks for the Xanga RSS fixer! It's been the only thing allowing me to keep my sanity with broken ol' Xanga.

Posted by: Kurt McKee April 21, 2005 10:08 AM | Permanent link

Thank you sooo much for that! You are indeed my #1 Blog Hero. To show our thankfulness - here, take this...its the symbolic keys to the Xanga community! :^)

Posted by: Daniel Gardner June 21, 2005 09:41 PM | Permanent link

You now hold the symbolic keys to Xanga? Could you lock the doors, please? *wink*

Posted by: Kurt McKee July 16, 2005 01:31 AM | Permanent link