Closed Bug 254230 Opened 20 years ago Closed 12 years ago

Re-adding a feed doesn't list the feed's entries anymore

Categories

(MailNews Core :: Feed Reader, defect)

defect
Not set
normal

Tracking

(Not tracked)

RESOLVED FIXED

People

(Reporter: asqueella, Unassigned)

References

Details

(Whiteboard: [duptome])

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.7) Gecko/20040730 Firefox/0.9.1+ (best browser EVAR1!!)
Build Identifier: version 0.7+ (20040730)

Re-adding a feed doesn't list the feed's entries anymore

Reproducible: Always
Steps to Reproduce:
1. Add http://www.squarefree.com/burningedge/index.rdf feed.
2. Delete the feed (del, OK, del from trash)
3. Add the feed - http://www.squarefree.com/burningedge/index.rdf - again.

Actual Results:  
The feed's items are no longer shown in the message view (at least most of them
- one item appeared sometimes).


Expected Results:  
The feed's items are all shown in the message view, as they were after step 1.


As I see from debug messages, the reason for such behaviour is that the feed
items are not deleted from feeditems datasource, so FeedItem.isStored() returns
true, and the item is not "stored", that is not added to the message view.

Also... tell me I'm wrong and you're *not* using nor going to use the content of
<link> tag for identifying the item. If it's true (which it seems it is), then
different items with the same URL will clash, some of them won't be stored into
message list etc. (Note, the link provided in the RSS is not intended to be a
global unique id, it is just an "alternate" link).
There's a somewhat complicated work around for this.

1. Make sure you close Thunderbird before making these changes.

2. Look in your profile's "News & Blogs" directory
    (or whatever you called it when you created the account).
    ...\Thunderbird\Profiles\Your Name\Mail\News & Blogs

3. Open feeditems.rdf

4. Delete the description for each missing post you want to download again.
   eg. Remove the <RDF:Description> elements that look like this for eash post.

<RDF:Description
    RDF:about="http://www.squarefree.com/burningedge/archives/000567.html"
    fz:stored="true"
    fz:valid="true">
  <fz:feed RDF:resource="http://www.squarefree.com/burningedge/index.rdf"/>
</RDF:Description>

That's not too hard, just seach for each one that has a URI in the same domain.

5. Restart Thunderbird and check feeds.  All posts will be downloaded for those
that were deleted.

  If you delete a description for a post you still have, then it will just get
downloaded again (assuming it's still in the feed), so you'll have two copies. 
For that reason, I don't recommend you delete the whole file.  Although you can
if you like, if you are subscribed a lot of feeds then each one will end up with
two copies of each post.

I think Thunderbird should delete all descriptions of previous posts when the
feed is deleted, or atleast confirm with the user before doing so.  Otherwise,
when a feed is subscribed to, then Thunderbird should check if there were any
previous posts that had already been read, and have descriptions in
feeditems.rdf, and check with the user, or provide an option to the user to
force downloading of those posts.  I don't know if either of those suggestions
are the ideal solution, it's just my ideas of how to fix this.
Confirmed on TB 0.8 over W2000pro.
Confirming on thunderbird 20040926 Debian.

For me, this happens with a feed, name of which begins with "..".
Actually, readding the feed doesn't work at all. I guess, it's because the .html
and .rsf files are not deleted when deleting rss subscription.
oh wait,

the entries are listed. I've just tested it with another blog (unsibscribing,
removing from trash, closing, resubscribing), and the entries were relisted.
Doesn't work for me: version 0.8 (20041001). confirming per comments 2 and 3.

Rimas, if you figure out which feeds do work and which don't, it would be great.
Status: UNCONFIRMED → NEW
Ever confirmed: true
bug still here with 20050401, setting version -> Trunk
Version: unspecified → Trunk
Bug here in Windows build version 1.0.2 (20050317).  Example feed:
http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blosxom.cgi?flav=rss
Bug still in 1.5b1 - perhaps there should be an expunge/purge option with
"Delete feed"?
Why would you ever not want to purge when you delete the feed?
Justin - I agree that it should be the default option, right now there is no option and purge does not exist.
Yes but making it an option is silly. Just do it when you delete the folder.
I threw the idea of an option in because obviously someone thinks that the current way of doing things is the correct way, otherwise it wouldn't have been programmed that way.
QA Contact: rss
Confirmed on TB 2.0.0.7 (20070728). After re-adding a feed lists only one item. I re-add some feeds two times to see the bug. Deleting "feeditems.rdf" suggested in the comment https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=254230#c1 works well.
Assignee: mscott → nobody
Component: RSS → Feed Reader
Product: Thunderbird → MailNews Core
Whiteboard: [duptome]
OS: Windows XP → All
Hardware: x86 → All
this is fixed in Tb12 by Bug 705504.  unsubscribing a feed or deleting a feed folder (moving it to trash) removes all items from feeditems.rdf so that a new subscribe will redownload current items.
Status: NEW → RESOLVED
Closed: 12 years ago
Resolution: --- → FIXED
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