[Mediawiki-l] "Recent Changes" RSS Feed from a Protected Wiki

[Norbert Hoeller]

Jim, thanks for the pointers!  Since I am looking for an RSS reader that 
is not browser-dependent, I downloaded SharpReader.  It successfully 
picked up a protected TypePad RSS feed, recognizing that it required 
authentication and prompting me for the access userid/password. 

When I tried to open the MediaWiki RSS feed, it failed with "Error parsing 
RSS XML: Undefined root element: html".  I had SharpReader validate the 
feed.  The HTML code that it dumped out was the Special:Userlogin page 
(line 55 was "<h1 class="firstHeading">Login Required</h1>").  I don't 
think it recognized that this was a protected feed.

The reason I'm having this problem is that the Wiki implementation 
requires a login for both edit/create and read.  RSSBandit has no problems 
with a Wiki where anyone can read the content, since no authentication is 
required for the RSS feed.
        Thanks, Norbert

  

> I know you want to use RSSBandit, but you may want to try some other 
clients
> first, just to check.  I'm not convinced that RSSBandit will handle HTTP
> authentication requests properly (though it by all means should).

> I've had good experiences using the NewsFox Firefox extension as well as 
the
> SharpReader Windows client.  My advice is to try a few more clients to 
see
> how well they deal with your feeds, and if it's just RSSBandit that 
keeps
> choking, it may be time to switch.

> -- Jim