Question thread #87

[pauamma]

It's time for another question thread!

The rules:

- You may ask any dev-related question you have in a comment. (It doesn't even need to be about Dreamwidth, although if it involves a language/library/framework/database Dreamwidth doesn't use, you will probably get answers pointing that out and suggesting a better place to ask.)
- You may also answer any question, using the guidelines given in To Answer, Or Not To Answer and in this comment thread.

Comments

[alyndra]

Hi! I noticed the RSS feeds from AO3 tags all seem to start off with the following non-working code for authors: < a rel="author" href="/users/talitha78/pseuds/talitha78">talitha78 < / a > (spaces added by me)

What, specifically, is going wrong here? Is AO3 sending wrong or “special” code, or is Dreamwidth (and possibly other sites??) just choking on this specific code? Thanks!

[pauamma]

Can you provide links to:
- an RSS feed entry that has this problem on Dreamwidth
- the corresponding entry on AO3
so someone can have a closer look at what happens?

I suspect that what is going on is that AO3 assumes that what happens on AO3 stays on AO3 (and thus doesn't need the https://www.ao3.org or whatever the AO3 domain is magic words in front of the href= URL), which is incorrect where RSS is concerned, but I can't swear to it without looking at the exact HTML.

[alyndra]

Sure! Sorry for not linking more thoroughly in the first place. https://leverageot3-feed.dreamwidth.org/109714.html
https://archiveofourown.org/works/24023284

As you see if you scroll down the feed, it's all the entries as far as I can see: https://leverageot3-feed.dreamwidth.org/

[pauamma]

OK, I looked at https://leverageot3-feed.dreamwidth.org/109714.html and it appears my initial guess was wrong. There's actually 2 (redundant) lists of authors:
- the first one (starting with "Posted by" in the Dreamwidth entry) has escaped HTML and probably comes from the first <author> tag in https://archiveofourown.org/tags/7005/feed.atom and is probably the one you meant;
- the second one (below the URL of the original entry on AO3, starting with "by") probably comes from part of the first <summary> tag in https://archiveofourown.org/tags/7005/feed.atom and appears to be rendered properly in the Dreamwidth feed.

I'm not sure (not having read the Atom feed standard and not being in a headspace to right now) whether AO3 is correct in putting escaped HTML in there at all and or whether Dreamwidth is correct in not trying to render that escaped HTML (which may or may not result in working links but at least would spare readers the gibberish you're seeing). So unless and until someone can (and manages to report it to whoever in a way that doesn't result in finger cross-pointing), I can only suggest to ignore the redundant authors bit for now. :-(

[alyndra]

That’s okay, it’s been like that a long time, I think, and I just got curious! Thanks for looking into it. I appreciate the details!