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Sunday, November 09, 2003

RSS = NQSSS, Part 7 

(Really Simple Syndication = Not Quite So Simple Syndication)

A Better RSS Validator

It's a geekygURL's prerogative to change her mind.

In Part 4 of my continuing serious of articles about RSS, I strongly suggested that you validate your RSS code on a regular basis. So, taking my own advice, that is exactly what I did this morning.

Only my RSS wouldn't validate. And the UserLand Validator that I'd previously suggested was no help at all in trying to figure out why my file would not validate. It did tell me that I had an unclosed ITEM tag, and the approximate character number the error occurred out. But the character number was something like 10765 -- way too high a number to allow for finding the error by counting the characters. (In the site's own defense, it DOES tell you that its error results will be vague. Go figure.)

After trying to parse the code with my own eyes, a process that was not only time consuming, but a true waste of a precious Sunday afternoon hour, I finally decided to -- insert big DUH here -- see if there was another validator out there somewhere that might be more helpful.

Mark Pilgrim and Sam Ruby's Feed Validator was just the answer. It was able to tell me exactly where my problem was by showing me the contents of the actual line. So all I had to do was use my text editor's Find command to locate the line in the file. Turns out it was not even an unclosed ITEM tag, but simply a misplaced angle bracket that had occurred as a results of copying and pasting.

Sigh.

Another RSS lesson learned.


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