Dave’s OPML Validator Beta
Dave’s made it to the web with his OPML Validator Beta. On the surface it seems a little more strict than Randy’s validator.
Dave’s linked to the caveats of the beta-ness of the tool, as well, which is pretty nice - especially the presence of the valid and invalid test files. As I linked previously, he’s noted some prior art in this area that he’s used in this tool in the Guidelines for Validation.
In my case I had cribbed someone else’s use of the outline type “title” for outlines that contain outlines and had to refer to Randy’s work on common types. As Dave noted, he’s used that for his work on the opml.org validator. Without referencing Randy’s notes I would have been hard pressed to make a determination as to what to do to fix the “invalid” types - that last in quotes because by Dave’s own admission in the comments to the Caveats post, the types are still up for discussion. It would, I think, be nice if Dave pointed to out-of-the-norm practices such as this as warnings (as opposed to what amount to errors), and to leave the error condition for things that actually violate the spec, which is silent on acceptable type-values (the spec says: “type is a string, it says how the other attributes of the <outline> are interpreted.”). Either that or Dave could point to the source he’s using for valid types in the actual error message. But these are small things, and I swiftly modified my OPML generator to output OPML that’s correct per Dave’s validator, which has an undeniable stamp of authority.
Thanks, Dave!
update: small copy-edits
RSS 2
October 29th, 2005 at 9:06 am
Cori,
this is cool.
my one comment is the lack of an opml extension.
But a quick tip I uaed was : in order to have your OPML feed show up in my OPML browser (which treats a ‘link’ type with a url ending in opml as OPML. (i used ‘opml’ not ‘.opml’) I added you link like this:
http://kinrowan.net/blog/wp/wp-opml.php?opml
now it works in my OPML browser (in development)
cool!
http://readerss.com/opml/kopml2.html
October 30th, 2005 at 7:13 am
Thanks Kosso!
I saw your comments in the thread on the opml-support group, specifically here, and agree with Bela’s response but by the time I had energy and time it seemed the moment had passed for timely response.
Dave mentions in the comments to the validator post that he’s thinking about a type for opml inclusion, and I think that’s important. As Bela says, more people are going to start generating OPML, and like RSS it will need to become automated to a certain degree before there’s widespread adoption, so I think that accepting opml that doesn’t end in “opml” is crucial.
That said, thanks for the hack to get mine working in your browser (which I love BTW) and thanks for the inclusion!
November 13th, 2005 at 4:54 am
[…] It looks like Carl is all over the type issue already, and that I may have lead him astray with my use of within-spec but non-Dave types. […]