NOTE: As of October 26th, Xanga has finally corrected their RSS feeds! Therefore, those of you who were using this script will now receive XML errors since it no longer works for Xanga’s new RSS. There is no practical use for this script anymore. To access Xanga RSS feeds use this format:
http://www.xanga.com/rss.aspx?user=INSERTUSERNAMEHERE
and send this url to your favorite RSS feed reader. Thanks for using Xanga RSS Fixer!
Being immensely annoyed at Xanga’s inability to create valid RSS feeds, I happened upon Josh Staiger’s Perl solution to fixing the Xanga RSS Feed. However, I could not run his perl script on this server (perhaps for missing modules or security reasons). Therefore, I decided to port it over to PHP and host the script on this site.
If you want to grab valid RSS feeds for your RSS reader, you can filter Xanga feeds through the PHP script here. Or you can craft the url yourself like this:
http://www.mikexstudios.com/labs/XangaRssFixer.php?user=InsertUsernameHere
Otherwise, you can download the source code, make modifications, or perhaps run the script on your own server. Please note that there is no practical uses for this script anymore since Xanga returns almost valid RSS feeds now.
On a sidenote: Xanga is really a horrible blogging service. I don’t see why people wouldn’t use LiveJournal or Blogger!
15 Comments
Blogger is really good. I would use it if I didn’t have wordpress.
Dave
the actual quality of a blog site is pretty irrelivant, its actually just about community. i agree, livejournal and others are significantly superior, however that’s largely useless to most people. i’m faithful to xanga because half of my high school friends started off with it, so we maintain our sites as a group.
Thanks much for this script. I’ve been looking for something like this for a while, since my friends are fairly entrenched in their xanga use. I’ll mirror this on my server, so as not to leech your bandwidth unneccesarily.
Thanks Joe for the comment. The credit really goes to Josh Staiger–I just pulled a PHP port. I had the same situation with my friends too: most of them are Xanga users. I hope the script works well for you!
thanks SOOO much for this! i will be posting a link to this wonderful handy tool very shortly. -suzanne
Yes, this appears to be the best working version available. Thanks for that.
No problem ^^;. Thanks for the comment.
Thank you! You saved our Xangas (as putrid as they may be). We are in your debt.
You’re welcome! Although, you should actually be thanking Josh Staiger since he created the version that I ported to PHP. I actually think of Xanga slightly better these days mainly because they have some functionality that other services don’t.
Thanks for the comment!
Thank you Josh Staiger - you’re my hero. :^)
Hey! Go to his site (http://www.joshstaiger.org/archives/2004/09/xanga_rss_fixer.html) and thank him ^^;.
I’m runing your script on my server and I was wondering if when you create the feed for the first time it seems to mark all the delivery dates of the current day instead of when they actually were posted which messes up my feed readers. Is there a way around this? Thanks for the script anyway. or at least the port.
Nevermind, I guess patience is a virtue, it seems to be fine after the first time I load them and new entries are posted.
I think Xanga changed their RSS files, because your screen scraper is spewing invalid XML.
Hi divergentdave,
I think you’re right! Xanga seems to have finally fixed their RSS feeds which now makes the RSS fixer solution I ported useless.
Thanks for giving me this tip!
6 Trackbacks
Xanga RSS Fixer for PHP
I recently received a comment from a fellow named Michael Huynh, regarding my Xanga RSS Fixer script. Apparently he has ported the Xanga RSS Fixer to PHP, complete with sourcecode. Thanks, Mike! Cool stuff. Check it out here….
[...] I have finally fixed up all my RSS feeds from every blog/journal I read. I even got all those pesky Xangas to work correctly using this nifty script. I am taking full advantage of Sarari RSS and read all my feeds from my browser instead of an external app. life is splendid when you don’t have to go to every page you want to read (unless you want to ) [...]
[...] http://www.mikexstudios.com/archives/2004/10/03/xanga-rss-fixer/ « Backstreet Boys -Incomplete [...]
[...] NOTE: As of October 26th, Xanga has finally corrected their RSS feeds! Therefore, those of you who were using my Xanga RSS Fixer port of Josh Staiger’s script will now receive XML errors since it no longer works for Xanga’s new RSS. There is no practical use for this script anymore. To access Xanga RSS feeds use this format: http://www.xanga.com/rss.aspx?user=INSERTUSERNAMEHERE and send this url to your favorite RSS feed reader. Thanks for using Xanga RSS Fixer! [...]
[...] the eXternal mind Blog Archive Xanga RSS Fixer There is no practical use for this script anymore. To access Xanga RSS feeds use this format: http://www.xanga.com/rss.aspx?user=INSERTUSERNAMEHERE and send this url to your favorite RSS feed reader [...]
[...] mikeXstudios (mikexstudios) wrote,@ 2004-10-03 11:40:00 Xanga RSS Fixer Being immensely annoyed at Xanga’s inability to create valid RSS feeds, I happened upon Josh Staiger’s Perl solution to fixing the Xanga RSS Feed. However, I could not run his perl script on this server (perhaps for missing modules or security reasons). Therefore, I decided to port it over to PHP and host the script on this site.If you want to grab valid RSS feeds for your RSS reader, you can filter Xanga feeds through the PHP script here. Or you can craft the url yourself like this:http://www.mikexstudios.com/labs/XangaRssFixer.php?user=InsertUsernameHereOtherwise, you can download the source code, make modifications, or perhaps run the script on your own server.On a sidenote: Xanga is really a horrible blogging service. I don’t see why people wouldn’t use LiveJournal or Blogger!View this post on my blog(Post a new comment) skilly 2004-10-19 11:45 pm UTC (link) I agreeeeee~ Xanga is really stinky! X__x;(Reply to this) [...]