Re: [syndication] Why is this rss feed invalid?

[burtonator <burton@relativity.yi.org>]

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"Alis Marsden" <alis@contentrelations.com> writes:

> >The discussed rss feed is : 
> >http://www.trendsportworld.com/newsfeed/rssfeeduk.asp
> 
> >error :  
> 
> >"Sorry, your RSS source did not validate. Here's the error message, 
> >it may be cryptic. "Can't create item "." because "" is an illegal 
> >name." 
> 
> >What did i do wrong?
> 
> 
> It could be your URLs, they contain &.
> I think & in a URL is illegal XML, you have to write &amp; instead.

In some frameworks which are not XML aware, this can be hard.  The easiest/safest
way to do this is to use CDATA

IE

<link><![CDATA[http://url/with/&/characters]]></link>

This way you can output valid XML and it would save you from screwing up in
99.9% of the cases.

The only case where you would get hit is if you URL had ]]> in it.

I use this in Emacs lisp (records-mode) so that I don't have to worry about
encoding.

... anyway.  This is a good hack and I wish more people would do it.

Kevin

- -- 
Kevin A. Burton ( burton@apache.org, burton@openprivacy.org, burtonator@acm.org )
        Cell: 408-910-6145 URL: http://relativity.yi.org ICQ: 73488596 

Stuff to read:
    <http://www.toad.com/gnu/whatswrong.html>
  What's Wrong with Copy Protection, by John Gilmore
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