Feed Informer: Forums » Topic: Incorrect characters are being chaged/added to descritio field

admin on "Incorrect characters are being chaged/added to descritio field"

admin — Fri, 16 Nov 2007 18:43:47 +0000

On the latter question, I don't see any text that matches the from for it to replace.

On the first question, you can nest the substitutions within each other if you need multiple ones.

<gsub from="x" to="y"><gsub from="z" to="a"> whatever.. </gsub></gsub>

lastday on "Incorrect characters are being chaged/added to descritio field"

lastday — Fri, 16 Nov 2007 17:45:50 +0000

Please answer the last question if possible. It is important.
Also, I can seem to get the "to" to insert any text in the gsub that is shown below. What am I doing wrong? By the way, this is in Digest number GS7O8YMJB7.

<table cellspacing="0" cellpadding="2" width="300">
<tr><td width="41" valign="top">
<ifdescription>
<img border="0" src="<gsub from="http://www.lastdaysreports.com/" to="text2">%DESCRIPTIONPLAIN%</gsub>" height="31" width="41">
</ifdescription>
</td>
<td valign="top">
<font face="verdana" size="2" color="#336699">%TITLE%</font></b></td></tr></table>

lastday on "Incorrect characters are being chaged/added to descritio field"

lastday — Fri, 16 Nov 2007 17:03:36 +0000

It worked, thank you! But, what if I have a couple different set of characters that I want to replaces? Can I do multiple "froms" and "tos" in the gsub template? For example I found another set of characters I need to replace in the digest.

admin on "Incorrect characters are being chaged/added to descritio field"

admin — Fri, 16 Nov 2007 16:52:13 +0000

Replace %DESCRIPTIONPLAIN% with:

<gsub from="#x26;" to="">%DESCRIPTIONPLAIN%</gsub>

I'm not guaranteeing it'll work, but it's a place to start.

You only get one template set per digest.

lastday on "Incorrect characters are being chaged/added to descritio field"

lastday — Fri, 16 Nov 2007 16:39:35 +0000

Here is my HTML code that I'm using. Where would you put the template? Also, can you use more than one template? at a time per identifier?

<table cellspacing="0" cellpadding="2" width="300">
<tr><td width="41" valign="top">
<ifdescription>
<img border="0" src="%DESCRIPTIONPLAIN%" height="31" width="41">
</ifdescription>
</td>
<td valign="top">
<font face="verdana" size="2" color="#336699">%TITLE%</font></b></td></tr></table>

admin on "Incorrect characters are being chaged/added to descritio field"

admin — Fri, 16 Nov 2007 16:03:52 +0000

Actually, there might be a way to fix this using one of Feed Digest's template features. We have a thing that lets you do substitutions on data. It works like so:

<gsub from="whatever" to="something else">%DESCRIPTIONPLAIN%</gsub>

What this would do is change any "whatever" in the description to "something else". Perhaps you could use it here.

<gsub from="#x26;" to="">%DESCRIPTIONPLAIN%</gsub>

That would then reduce it to something that, I believe, would work.

lastday on "Incorrect characters are being chaged/added to descritio field"

lastday — Fri, 16 Nov 2007 15:55:26 +0000

Let me think about this, thank you. Don't close forum yet.

admin on "Incorrect characters are being chaged/added to descritio field"

admin — Fri, 16 Nov 2007 15:27:30 +0000

A more direct view at a single affected item direct from the del.icio.us feed:

http://img527.imageshack.us/img527/3850/deliciousfeedproblemld5.png

If it was just the "amp;" stuff, it'd be okay, but it's that weird #26 stuff they're adding which is breaking it.

admin on "Incorrect characters are being chaged/added to descritio field"

admin — Fri, 16 Nov 2007 15:25:40 +0000

Are you looking at the raw information in the del.icio.us *feed* (i.e. http://del.icio.us/rss/lastday)?

I have put a copy at http://www.petercooper.co.uk/lastday.txt for you. Notice that every single ampersand in the del.icio.us feed has this problem. Feed Digest is merely passing through whatever del.icio.us supplies in their feed. Of course, it should look okay on the del.icio.us Web site, but it's not looking good in the feed that your digest is based upon (i.e. http://del.icio.us/rss/lastday).

lastday on "Incorrect characters are being chaged/added to descritio field"

lastday — Fri, 16 Nov 2007 15:24:12 +0000

I made a screen shot of my del.icio.us page so you can see. The second item down has the correct characters in the link. Here is that screen shot.
http://www.lastdaysreports.com/images/FEEDD2.jpg

Please let me know. Brian

lastday on "Incorrect characters are being chaged/added to descritio field"

lastday — Fri, 16 Nov 2007 15:03:37 +0000

I hear what you are telling me but I'm looking at the raw information at del.icio.us and it only has the "&" and not the "& a m p;". But, what if we changed the encoding of the information? I can't find the link but I thought I saw somewhere on your website something to insert into a header to take care of character problems. Would that fix this? Might it fix this?

lastday on "Incorrect characters are being chaged/added to descritio field"

lastday — Fri, 16 Nov 2007 14:51:35 +0000

My information is not comming through properlly above so I will insert a space between each character below. Some how when I hit "Send Post" my characters are not coming through.
-- My "&" characters in the link are being replaced with "& a m p ;"

admin on "Incorrect characters are being chaged/added to descritio field"

admin — Fri, 16 Nov 2007 14:51:07 +0000

I think for some reason what you are typing is not coming out here. If, however, you are talking about & being replaced with..

& # x 2 6 ; a m p ; (without the spaces)

Then.. that's already happened in your del.icio.us RSS feed. If you look at the raw source of http://del.icio.us/rss/lastday then that switch has already taken place. We just then repeat what's in the original source.

lastday on "Incorrect characters are being chaged/added to descritio field"

lastday — Fri, 16 Nov 2007 14:43:51 +0000

Thank you for the reply but let me explain. If you go to the page generated by Feed Digest http://app.feeddigest.com/digest3/3ARQHMEYF0.html
You will see that the second image and the second from last image is displayed as an error. Everything else is correct. What I notice is that the "&" character in the link from del.icio.us, are being replaced at Feed Digest with the following:
-- When there is an "&" character in a del.icio.us link (description field). It is getting replaced at Feed Digest with an "&". This is what is happening. Any ideas???

By the way, I love this site, this is what I have been waiting for!

Thanks, Frank

admin on "Incorrect characters are being chaged/added to descritio field"

admin — Fri, 16 Nov 2007 14:15:09 +0000

If you look at the raw data of the actual RSS feed being used, you can use that these weird adjustments are actually already in place in that feed, so we simply recreate them. As you will notice, many of the images work fine, but some do not. These URLs are remaining intact from the del.icio.us feed, and that is, unfortunately, where they are all scrambled.

lastday on "Incorrect characters are being chaged/added to descritio field"

lastday — Fri, 16 Nov 2007 14:05:22 +0000

I hope I can explain this problem so it is understandable so please be patient with me. Here goes...The digest ID I'm discussing here is 3ARQHMEYF0 and I'm pulling RSS from from del.icio.us.

Now, once I load the Java Script onto the website from the code generator something is happening with the Description code. Some of the characters are not passing through properly and are being changed. This is killing the ability of an image from being displayed on a live web page. What can be done to make sure that the entire image link is making it through your system that is in the Description field? Please note that it is not cutting off characters from the end but changing ones in it. Specifically it looks like it does not like the & character. Any ideas?

I have listed the correct link straight from del.icio.us first, and the link with screwed up characters second. If you put them both in a text editor on top of each other you can see which characters are being changed.

http://d.yimg.com/us.yimg.com/p/nm/20071115/2007_11_15t102212_450x295_us_israel_roman.jpg?x=180&y=117&sig=sZhGuiOE48aZ2rvI__QyVA--

Thanks, Frank