?Ezine Feed

webfeatus · Joined: 12 May 2008 Posts: 23

I am involved in a support discussion with EzineArticles.com Support.
Regarding this example:
http://www.villanalinabali.com/resources/villa-rental.html
I have explained that this feed has a display error in IE v9:
http://feeds.ezinearticles.com/category/Travel-and-Leisure:Vacation-Rentals.xml The feed displays in FF and I have snt them screenshots.

Are you able to understand what is going on here?

Tech Support · Joined: 27 Aug 2004 Posts: 2806

There is an error within the feed:

XML parsing error: Line 652, character 189: not well-formed (invalid token)

Here's line 652

Character 189 is the R in Read.

FireFox can handle it no problem and so can the other feed readers I tested but IE9 can't, it seems. If you modify that line to remove the hyperlink in the description, it should take care of the error.

webfeatus · Joined: 12 May 2008 Posts: 23

I will include a link to this forum topic in my next communication with Ezine Support.
Meanwhile, how do I "modify that line to remove the hyperlink in the description" so it takes care of the error in this output in IEv9?
http://www.villanalinabali.com/resources/villa-rental.html
(see RSS feed at bottom of page)

Tech Support · Joined: 27 Aug 2004 Posts: 2806

Actually, I misspoke earlier, it isn't a hyyperlink issue.

The errocode being generated is:

$errorCode = 9
xml_error_string() = Invalid character
xml_get_current_line_number() = 645
xml_get_current_column_number() = 23
xml_get_current_byte_index() = 52705

Now, normally that error only really pops up if either the hosting webpage or the feed are in ISO instead of UTF-8 but I checked the encoding on both and they're both set to UTF-8. So, after digging a bit, I discovered that it's complaining about a smart quote symbol in the feed, which is also what's causing IE9 to not display the feed properly.

Now, since the smart quote symbol in the feed is technically a valid UTF-8 symbol, that really shouldn't be causing an error unless the versions of the libraries used to build PHP on your webhost are outdated.

So, two things:

1) Check with your webhost to make sure that the PHP libraries are up to date.

2) Do you have any control over the original feed itself or are you just translating the content?

webfeatus · Joined: 12 May 2008 Posts: 23

Just calling the ezine feed; no control.
I am in the process of upgrading php on the server but that may take some time - a glitch with zend optimizer/guard (5.3)

But I cannot see how that will assist with the basic issue:
http://feeds.ezinearticles.com/category/Travel-and-Leisure:Vacation-Rentals.xml does not display in IEv9

Tech Support · Joined: 27 Aug 2004 Posts: 2806

Oh, right... no, that won't directly effect the feed not displaying properly in IE9. Unfortunately, since you have no direct control over the feed, you can't really make any modifications to it and can't change how it's output. There's not really anything you can do directly on your end to make the feed display properly in IE9 because you can't modify the feed.

webfeatus · Joined: 12 May 2008 Posts: 23

I will let you know what ezine support say.

Meanwhile, I have just upgraded php & mysql
PHP Version: 5.3.21
MYSQL Version: 5.5.29-cll

Deprecated: Function split() is deprecated in /var/www/vhosts/villanalinabali.com/httpdocs/resources/rss/xmlparser.inc.php on line 260

Fatal error: Call to undefined method baseParserClass::baseParserClassWithExtensions() in /var/www/vhosts/villanalinabali.com/httpdocs/resources/rss/xmlparser.inc.php on line 1693

Seen at: http://www.villanalinabali.com/resources/resources.html

Tech Support · Joined: 27 Aug 2004 Posts: 2806

Based on that error, it looks like you're using an old version of the rss2html script. We stopped using split a while back because it wasn't supported by PHP anymore. So, all you have to do is download the latest script and replace your existing one and that error should go away.

webfeatus · Joined: 12 May 2008 Posts: 23

Updated script.
Still an issue.
(in example url above)

$XMLFILE = "http://www.articlesbase.com/rss/categories/788";
$TEMPLATE = "rss2template.htm";
$MAXITEMS = "7";
$NOFUTUREITEMS = "1";
include("rss2html.php");

Tech Support · Joined: 27 Aug 2004 Posts: 2806

What is the full URL to the template you're using?

webfeatus · Joined: 12 May 2008 Posts: 23

http://www.villanalinabali.com/resources/rss2template.htm

webfeatus · Joined: 12 May 2008 Posts: 23

[quote="Tech Support"]What is the full URL to the template you're using?[/quote]

http://www.villanalinabali.com/resources/rss2template.htm

Tech Support · Joined: 27 Aug 2004 Posts: 2806

Okay, what you're running in to is that you need to use the full URL to the template rather than just referencing the template name in the $TEMPLATE variable. Using a test copy of the rss2html.php script on my web server with the full URL to your feed and template, I can get it to output results. So, updating that variable with the full URL should fix the output issue for your site.

webfeatus · Joined: 12 May 2008 Posts: 23

OK. I will try that. Thank you.

Meanwhile...

I had a reply from Ezine Support.

Quote:

Thank you for your reply.

This feed has now been fixed. Please let us know if you encounter any
further issues or errors with this feed.

Thank you,
Jenna
http://EzineArticles.com