Ted Leung on the air : User agent versions in RSS Aggregators

Ted Leung on the air
Ted Leung on the air: Open Source, Java, Python, and ...

Wed, 04 Jun 2003

Time to start another "bad RSS aggregator list". Today's list is a list of aggregators that don't follow the conventions for User Agent Strings, especially regarding the use of '/' to separate the user agent name from the version number. Following the convention makes it easier to track usage.

Aggie
BottomFeeder
ChannelBuddy
FeedReader
RSS Bandit
Straw
nntp//rss
vw-http

[16:05] | [computers/internet/www] | # | TB | F | G | 5 Comments |

Thanks for the heads-up. I've modified the user-agent within nntp//rss to be compliant with the spec.

Example:

nntprss/0.4 (Windows XP 5.1 x86; http://www.methodize.org/nntprss/)

This change will be part of the forthcoming 0.4 release.
Posted by Jason Brome at Wed Jun 4 22:26:59 2003

I'm in the process of resurrecting an old RSS aggregator project I started a couple years ago ( [http://sourceforge.net/projects/wayne] ), and until I read this article I hadn't even thought about there being standards for things like referrers (I don't think mine sends any headers at all...)

Maybe this is why when I ran the old code up a week or so ago I was "banned" by Slashdot! Can you offer any pointers to aggregator standards?

Thanks.
Posted by Frank Carver at Thu Jun 5 10:42:19 2003

Please identify the "the conventions for User Agent Strings" and provide examples of both valid and invalid uses. Don't make us guess.
Posted by rademers@mn.rr.com at Fri Jun 6 18:28:14 2003

For reference purposes the RFC that covers the user agent converntions is HTTP/1.1, section 3.8 there are a couple of examples given.
Posted by BenM at Sat Jun 7 05:06:59 2003

Fixed in the current build of RSS Bandit

RssBandit/1.1.0.14

I should be releasing this to the public in the next few days.
Posted by Dare Obasanjo at Sat Jun 7 22:12:47 2003

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