The RSS Blog

News and commentary from the RSS and OPML community.

This is a test of the this & that protocol.

Conclusion: I was testing my own software to see if I properly encoded the ampersand character in the title and description. I'm gonna run a contest, where users report which publishers and aggregators are respecting the encoding. I'm thinking that whomever provides the most correct data points wins ($30 at Amazon) and then have a draw with all remaining participants for a second prize ($20 at Amazon).  I'm starting by offering the $50 in Amazon merchandise. If anybody else wants to sponsor with additional prizes, then please ping me. Don't submit entries yet. I'll announce the contest ASAP and you can submit entries then.

Reader Comments Subscribe
I don't quite understand the competition. What exactly is a "correct data point"?

I have plenty of records of feeds that have escaped ampersands correctly at some point in the past. However, because of the transient nature of feed data, it's not always easy to come up with a current example unless you are generating the feed data yourself.

It's also worth noting that escaping ampersands correctly does not necessarily imply that other characters will also be escaped correctly - I know it sounds weird, but that does happen.

As for aggregator testing, you're going to need a better title than "this & that". I can think of only one aggregator that will have displayed this post's title incorrectly (and you know I've tested a lot of aggregators). It's just too easy.

James Holderness
Type "339":