probs with rss

[twitchy]

Hi,
i seem to be having probs with the rss feed from my news articles.
It's very sensitive (?) and if theres an apostophy, comma, hyphen etc. it blocks the whole feed. the rss usually gives the first couple of words/ letters before the offending mark so you can correct it . however now i'm getting:

An invalid character was found in text content. Error processing resource 'http://www.twitchy.co.uk/integra/news_rss.php'.


any suggestions as to how to fix this so the rss isnt quite as 'picky'

[computerz]

Hi,
i seem to be having probs with the rss feed from my news articles.
It's very sensitive (?) and if theres an apostophy, comma, hyphen etc. it blocks the whole feed. the rss usually gives the first couple of words/ letters before the offending mark so you can correct it . however now i'm getting:

An invalid character was found in text content. Error processing resource 'http://www.twitchy.co.uk/integra/news_rss.php'.


any suggestions as to how to fix this so the rss isnt quite as 'picky'

I would just delete the current copy and reload a clean version of news_rss.php

[BMD]

I would just delete the current copy and reload a clean version of news_rss.php

I just found I have the same problem as well... and I am using a totaly new install of IM140 with phpBB2.0.21 and have added the security patches.

I use dots(periods) to put space between the first word (usually news local) and the news item title.....

example: VIRGINA......My site is having RSS News feed problems

and I just checked my RSS feed and get the following error.

The XML page cannot be displayed
Cannot view XML input using XSL style sheet. Please correct the error and then click the Refresh button, or try again later.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

An invalid character was found in text content. Error processing resource 'http://www.balloontrader.com/lta/news_rss.php'. ...

A United Van Lines hot air balloon got a head start for this weekend

Could this be the problem?

I looked at the post that the error had listed in it and there is an appostophy ( ' ) as the next character in that line

An invalid character was found in text content. Error processing resource 'http://www.balloontrader.com/lta/news_rss.php'. ...

A United Van Lines hot air balloon got a head start for this weekend

Could this be the problem?

[computerz]

I don't know.. this is over my head.. we need one of the developers to step in and answer this one.

[tekguru]

One problem associated with RSS is that closed forum posts end up going out over RSS - not nice <img>

[BMD]

Has ANYONE resolved this problem?.....

I'd like to set my rss up on the portal with a scroller but I still have the issue with the news_rss.php not working....

Is it just a matter of uploading a fresh copy of that file?

I have a nice scroller script on my portal that is pulling feeds from fox news and the Storm Prediction Center... but when I try to pull the news_rss.php from my site it craps out.... when I look at the news_rss.php page there is an error

The XML page cannot be displayed
Cannot view XML input using XSL style sheet. Please correct the error and then click the Refresh button, or try again later.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

An invalid character was found in text content. Error processing resource 'http://www.balloontrader.com/lta/news_rss.php'. ...

Riding in a helicopter, on the back of a Harley or in a hot air balloon may not seem like a dare devil

I get the news block ok, but I'd rather have a small scrolling block like the other feeds..... anyone have any ideas?

[url=http]CLICK HERE[/url] to see the scrollers on the portal

[Teelk]

Don't know why I didn't see this before.... <img>

RSS is very sensitive by nature, the most common reason for getting an invalid character error when validating the feed is because of text editors. If you use a text editor, mainly one based in Windows(Word, wordpad, etc.) they use different special characters.

For example, this is single apostrophe typed here in the text box '

Here is a single apostrophe copied from Microsoft Word à¢Ãƒ ¢Ã¢â‚¬Å¡Ã‚ ¬Ãƒâ€¹Ã…“

You can see the difference, the second one, from Word is an invalid character and will return errors.

The best thing to do is try and hunt down the invalid characters using a feed validator.

I recommend http://feedvalidator.org as I've had success with it.

Use the URL http://www.mysite.com/subforum/news_rss.php

So, your URL would be http://www.balloontrader.com/lta/news_rss.php

It looks like it is the Windows issue, fix that one post with the invalid single quote and see if that gets your feed working again. Most other validation errors can be ignored if your feed is working.

[BMD]

KUDOs Teelk

I went through all the news posts and found a slew of character errors.....

Is there some way to have the board correct those?

Cheers
Doug

[Teelk]

Off the top of my head, the only way I can think of doing it is by hand... searching through each post and finding/replacing all the characters.