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kellan (905)

kellan
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http://laughingmeme.org/

Journal of kellan (905)

Sunday July 28, 2002
08:07 PM

Why doesn't XML::RSS encode entities?

[ #6706 ]

Why doesn't XML::RSS encode entities automatically when outputting XML? (or with a flag?) If I parse an RSS file with XML::RSS I get a nice datastructure out that I can tweak and play with, but if I want to pass that datastructure back into XML::RSS I have to worry about walking the mess of nested hashes, and re-encoding every stray ampersand.

Not so hard you say? True. Simply in fact. I can cut and paste lines 658 thru 897 out of XML::RSS and into my script, and then add a handful of calls to encode(). Somehow though, cutting and pasting 240 lines into my script seems the wrong way to go.

Is there a logic behind this that I'm missing? In general its a very nice module, and I feel like maybe I'm over looking a perfectly valid reason for building a tool that encourages broken XML.

Any insights appreciated. Thanks.


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  • Why doesn't XML::RSS encode entities automatically when outputting XML?

    I've wondered that, myself, many times. But I was (and am) too lazy to cook up a simple "see, look at this" test case to mail to the author.

    • I think the author knows. Digging deeper on CPAN I found a 9 month old open bug on this very issue. The example case is pretty simple.

      my $rss_in = new XML::RSS();
      $rss_in->parsefile($file_containing_an_ampersand);
      my $rss_out = new XML::RSS();
      $rss_out->add_item( $rss_in->{'items'}[0] );
      $rss_out->save('malformed_xml.rss');

      I got email from someone who says they have a DWIM patch. If that falls through and I can't find a good reason for the current behaviour I'll write one.

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