RSS feed error / hacked ?

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Alez

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Message 1356 - Posted: 11 Oct 2015, 0:11:49 UTC
Last modified: 11 Oct 2015, 0:12:03 UTC

Whilst attempting to access the RSS feed for this project for our forum I get Error loading: http://numberfields.asu.edu/NumberFields/rss_main.php

If I manually navigate to the page I am faced with a large ALERT and a virus sign. Has your RSS feed been compromised ?
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Profile Eric Driver
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Message 1357 - Posted: 12 Oct 2015, 3:50:13 UTC - in response to Message 1356.  

I think I fixed this now. Let me know if you are still having problems.

Thanks!
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Alez

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Message 1359 - Posted: 12 Oct 2015, 10:38:51 UTC

Thanks Eric,
I can access manually no problem so hopefully feed is fully working again.
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Alez

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Message 1360 - Posted: 13 Oct 2015, 1:15:57 UTC

Eric,
NumberFields has no pubdate in their RSS feed.
Because of this we are having to enhance exception handling and error reporting for this and default the pubDate to the current time to display the feed in our forum .Our feed is here http://www.dunadd.co.uk/seti/forum/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=2802&start=615 as you can see we have had to default your posts to the day we pull them into the feed rather than when you post them.
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Message 1361 - Posted: 13 Oct 2015, 5:23:34 UTC - in response to Message 1360.  

Eric,
NumberFields has no pubdate in their RSS feed.
Because of this we are having to enhance exception handling and error reporting for this and default the pubDate to the current time to display the feed in our forum .Our feed is here http://www.dunadd.co.uk/seti/forum/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=2802&start=615 as you can see we have had to default your posts to the day we pull them into the feed rather than when you post them.


I removed the pubDate since it seemed like the only way to get the feed to work. When I put it back in I get the yellow exclamation point on the maroon background (ASU's colors). It would appear that ASU's firewall is highjacking the feed and inserting that obnoxious image. A few months ago they implemented a more stringent firewall, and I bet this is a side effect. When I run the rss_main.php while logged into the server it spits out the desired html, so I know the code is good, it just cant reach the outside world.

I will send an email to the IT department to see if there is a way around this. In the meantime, is there something else I can do to help with this? I could set up a cronjob to automatically run rss_main.php and dump the html into a file. I'm not too familiar with RSS feeds; but could you set up your feeds to read an rss_main.html file instead of a php file? If so, that would probably be the easiest solution.
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Message 1362 - Posted: 13 Oct 2015, 5:40:32 UTC - in response to Message 1361.  

Eric,
NumberFields has no pubdate in their RSS feed.
Because of this we are having to enhance exception handling and error reporting for this and default the pubDate to the current time to display the feed in our forum .Our feed is here http://www.dunadd.co.uk/seti/forum/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=2802&start=615 as you can see we have had to default your posts to the day we pull them into the feed rather than when you post them.


I removed the pubDate since it seemed like the only way to get the feed to work. When I put it back in I get the yellow exclamation point on the maroon background (ASU's colors). It would appear that ASU's firewall is highjacking the feed and inserting that obnoxious image. A few months ago they implemented a more stringent firewall, and I bet this is a side effect. When I run the rss_main.php while logged into the server it spits out the desired html, so I know the code is good, it just cant reach the outside world.

I will send an email to the IT department to see if there is a way around this. In the meantime, is there something else I can do to help with this? I could set up a cronjob to automatically run rss_main.php and dump the html into a file. I'm not too familiar with RSS feeds; but could you set up your feeds to read an rss_main.html file instead of a php file? If so, that would probably be the easiest solution.


In my previous post, I should have referred to the output of rss_main as xml (not html). I did a quick test, and apparently the firewall is keying off of the "rss" tag inside the xml file, so it still blocks the data. I imagine you need that rss tag to be able to read the feed; otherwise I could strip that off and the firewall would let the rest of the data through.
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Message 1363 - Posted: 13 Oct 2015, 17:01:58 UTC

Eric,
Great to see such a response from a project.

I don't need the root node to be an RSS tag. The XML file will still need a root node but it can be called anything you like.

Reading an XML file from http://numberfields.asu.edu/NumberFields/rss_main.xml would work fine for our needs.
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Message 1364 - Posted: 13 Oct 2015, 20:44:36 UTC - in response to Message 1363.  

Eric,
Great to see such a response from a project.

I don't need the root node to be an RSS tag. The XML file will still need a root node but it can be called anything you like.

Reading an XML file from http://numberfields.asu.edu/NumberFields/rss_main.xml would work fine for our needs.


Ok. I will try a different name in the root node when I get home tonight and see how that works.

I heard back from the IT department. They said they would have to incorporate a certificate and then do a redirect to https in order to get RSS feeds through the firewall. They also couldn't guarantee that the rest of the project servers would remain operational, so it sounds like changing the RSS tag might be the easiest fix.
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Message 1365 - Posted: 14 Oct 2015, 4:43:06 UTC - in response to Message 1364.  

I changed the root node tag to "news_feed". When I click the RSS_feed link on the main page it pulls up the xml, so I think it's working correctly.

And I didn't modify any filenames, so you still use rss_main.php to get the feed.

Let me know how it works.
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Janos of TSBT

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Message 1366 - Posted: 14 Oct 2015, 7:54:19 UTC

Hi Eric,

We really appreciate your effort on this. Thank you.

I can confirm that http://numberfields.asu.edu/NumberFields/rss_main.php works for us.

I also happened to notice that you are producing http://numberfields.asu.edu/NumberFields/rss_main.xml. Do you have a preference which we use?

Thank you again,
Janos
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Profile Eric Driver
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Message 1367 - Posted: 14 Oct 2015, 15:33:54 UTC - in response to Message 1366.  

Hi Eric,

We really appreciate your effort on this. Thank you.

I can confirm that http://numberfields.asu.edu/NumberFields/rss_main.php works for us.

I also happened to notice that you are producing http://numberfields.asu.edu/NumberFields/rss_main.xml. Do you have a preference which we use?

Thank you again,
Janos


Oh sorry, the xml version was just a test. It was a one time snap shot, so you don't want to use that. I will remove it so there is no confusion.

Eric
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Alez

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Message 1368 - Posted: 14 Oct 2015, 16:49:47 UTC

Perfect Eric.
Can I echo Janos and thank you for your help getting this working.
Alez
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