Newsblur will not add an 'invalid' feed.

problem
#1

Newsblur refuses to add this feed: http://dewgong-.tumblr.com/rss

I assume it doesn’t like the subdomain because of the tailing dash, although this is a valid subdomain name (http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2181.txt).

1 Like
#2

The W3C validator also can’t load the feed: http://validator.w3.org/feed/check.cg…

RFC2181 is talking about the DNS protocol, DNS is more than just hostnames, and thus supports labels that are invalid in hostnames.

dewgong-.tumblr.com is an invalid hostname, some applications support invalid hostnames but lots don’t.

EDIT: See RFC952 and RFC1123

#3

The problem remains that this is an actual feed and however invalid its host name may be, as a customer, I want it parsed. It’s not technologically infeasible.

The host name may not resolve in the W3C validator but using 8.8.8.8 (Google DNS) and both nslookup and host will resolve it fine on my laptop.

Python (through httpie) is also able to receive and parse the feed without issues, just as cURL is able to fetch it itself.

#4

As previously mentioned, just because it’s a valid domain doesn’t mean it’s a valid hostname or a valid URL.

In this case it’s a relatively safe and simple thing for Samuel to change, but IMO he shouldn’t because, as the saying goes, the road to hell is paved with good intentions.

For a quick fix you can just run the feed through pipes (assuming yahoo will accept the dodgy URL).

#5

Even if it’s not a ‘valid’ URL, it loads. There are a lot of these around and I don’t think they’re going away.

I agree it would be nice if people would just follow the standards but unfortunately that’s not the way the web works.