300932 - Thunderbird can't subscribe new RSS feeds which contain no items

Status: RESOLVED WORKSFORME

(MailNews Core :: Feed Reader, defect)

Description

[Andy Dustman]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.7.8) Gecko/20050605 Galeon/1.3.21
Build Identifier: Thunderbird version 1.0.5 (20050715)

When adding a subscription to an RSS feed which exists, but contains no items
(i.e. <rdf:Seq> is present but empty), the RSS Subscriptions dialog displays
"Verifying the feed..." but never completes. Pressing OK brings up a dialog,
"Are you sure you wish to cancel subscribing to the current feed?".

First noticed in 1.0.2, and present in 1.0.5.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Select News&Blogs
2. Select Manage Subscriptions
3. Click Add
4. Enter a URL which points to an RSS file which has no items in it.
5. Click OK
Actual Results:  
"Verifying the feed..." is displayed but never completes.


Expected Results:  
It should add the feed to the subscribed list.

An easy way to reproduce this is to point at a del.icio.us tag feed for a tag
that is not in use (you do not need an account for this). An example of this
(currently) is http://del.icio.us/rss/tag/goombatastic which looks like this:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>

<rdf:RDF
 xmlns:rdf="http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#"
 xmlns="http://purl.org/rss/1.0/"
 xmlns:taxo="http://purl.org/rss/1.0/modules/taxonomy/"
 xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/"
 xmlns:syn="http://purl.org/rss/1.0/modules/syndication/"
 xmlns:admin="http://webns.net/mvcb/"
>

<channel rdf:about="http://del.icio.us/tag/goombatastic">
<title>del.icio.us/tag/goombatastic</title>
<link>http://del.icio.us/tag/goombatastic</link>
<description></description>
<items>
 <rdf:Seq>
 </rdf:Seq>
</items>
</channel>

</rdf:RDF>

Comment 1

[Scott MacGregor]

I've seen some other bug reports like this.

Comment 2

[Adam Guthrie]

Could be a dupe of bug 259777, but then you also have the issue of it not liking
blank feeds.

Comment 3

[Magnus Melin [:mkmelin]]

WFM on trunk, version 1.0+ (20050715) linux.

Comment 4

[Adam Guthrie]

version 1.0+ (20050716)

I just tried and it works for me, too. Tried it with both "show article summary
instead of loading page" checked and unchecked.

Comment 5

[Brian Moon]

I have the same problem on Linux version 1.0.6 (20050716) trying
http://del.icio.us/rss/tag/goombatastic and any other empty feed I can find. 
Checking the box for summary/page has no effect.

Comment 6

[Magnus Melin [:mkmelin]]

This works fine for me, version 1.0+ (20050826). Do reopen if you can still have
a problem when using current nighly build. 

Comment 7

[Jeroen Kransen]

I am experiencing the same issue in 1.0.7, when subscribing to my currently empty RSS feed:

http://blogs.kransen.nl/rss/jeroen

It indefinitely waits with the message "Verifying the feed" and the progress bar on 100%.

I don't seem to be able to reopen this bug...

Comment 8

[Magnus Melin [:mkmelin]]

(In reply to comment #7)
> I am experiencing the same issue in 1.0.7, when subscribing to my currently

Try 1.5 rc2...

Comment 9

[Ray Booysen]

*** Bug 322471 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 10

[Ray Booysen]

Jeroen, please try 1.5rc2.  If it still occurs there for you, comment here and I will reopen for you.  Until then its still WFM.