craigslist failing to update automatically; Insta-fetch is fine

problem
1

It seems that my craigslist feeds fail (HTTP 403) when automatically updated but they work fine every time I use insta-fetch. For example:

http://frederick.craigslist.org/tls/i…
http://martinsburg.craigslist.org/pho…
http://westmd.craigslist.org/zip/inde…

3 Likes
2

I’m seeing the same issue, occasionally the automatic fetch does succeeded, but the success ratio is low.

I know when yahoo pipes first came out I created a feed to combine craigslist feeds and they had the same issue. Not sure how it was resolved, but I assume the 403s are due to a flood protection check on the craigslist end.

3

I think so too. They do sometimes work, but Craigslist is rate limiting NewsBlur. The reason insta-fetch works is because I obscure some things (and force a cache buster). I may just hard-code a cache buster for Craigslist since that’s the only thing that’ll fix it.

4

While this seems to be doing better as far as not having failures… many of the posts are basically empty. For example:

paslode framing gun two batteries charger nails (carlisle pa ) $150
Today, June 8th 7:19pm
Posting ID: 3858454887

Posted: 2013-06-08, 7:19PM EDT

email to a friend

is what i see for ‘text’ view and the story is empty (presumably because it failed to get the link from the feed. or so i would guess).

5

One of my favorite things to do in Google Reader was to subscribe to a Craigslist search using a URL, such as: “http://newyork.craigslist.org/search/…”.

Pasted into my browser address bar, this returns (at the moment) 457 posts. In NB it only returned 17 posts when I created the feed. Never a problem in GR, where I had about 15 of these search URLs feeding me new posts on various items.

Any advice on this?

Thanks,

6

Aside from not getting all the items, are you having the same issue as me? The posts are empty and you have to open the URL to see anything?

7

What posts I have are OK. Still not getting the full feed content.

8

Craiglist doesn’t provide the full feed content. There’s not much I can do about that, other than to hope the Text view pulls what you’re looking for.

9

Thanks for your reply. Am I correct that GR could update CL item lists without an RSS feed, just based on the URL?

10

Samuel, I’m not sure which issue you are referring to. I looked at dr’s link and pulled the rss version which was basically empty so I would certainly agree there’s nothing you can do with that. dr will have to dig into craigslist to find a functional search feed. As to reader having worked without an actual rss feed? I don’t know that I ever tried though this video seems to show it working at some point with Reader.

http://www.grovo.com/craigslist

On my problem, some feed items show and others do not. I’m sure that craigslist is mucking with it… but you were able to deal with the first issue so I’m holding out hope.

Have a great weekend!