RSS Feeds not valid?

Discussions General
1

I subscribed to the Pro version primarily to get access to RSS feeds (and the year-end Retrospective which is great!), but so far, I’m disappointed. I’m trying to get a feed for the shows (episodes of shows, actually) I have recently watched. I adjust the filters in the Progress tab but get a list of Up Next episodes for the shows I’m watching. Also, the feed is a little funky. I use a parser that I’ve used with feed from other sites (Pinboard, Letterboxd, GoodReads, etc.) to create widgets for my website that work just fine with them, but with Trakt, it’s weird (see screenshot):

Screenshot 2023-01-19 at 8.16.00 AM
Screenshot 2023-01-19 at 8.16.00 AM1422×806 64.4 KB

Ignoring for now that these are the episodes from the Up Next and not actually watched, notice how only the first RSS item is hyperlinked (Ugh! I can’t embed a second screenshot as a new user). I’ve chosen to hide the description because if I do, the ones for the second and third items are full of weird tags and metadata.

Any help with fixing this?

2

Sounds like you want the rss feed from the history page, that is what you’ve recently watched. Not sure on parsing, we have some extra fields in there but all the standard rss feeds should be in there too.

3

Thanks. That was what I wanted. It still didn’t fix the hyperlinking of items 2 & 3. See the screenshot below on the results of the parser

Screenshot 2023-01-15 at 12.19.49 PM
Screenshot 2023-01-15 at 12.19.49 PM1796×706 89.8 KB

4

From someone who knows more about RSS feeds than I do:

A few things don’t make sense to me on the feed provided by Trakt. For example, in the screenshot below, you’ll see two weird things. First, this random post is FUTURE dated (published and updated) with a date of February 9, 2023. Additionally, there’s an occasional tag that doesn’t seem to be correct: <summary/>

CleanShot 2023-01-17 at 22.08.39@2x
CleanShot 2023-01-17 at 22.08.39@2x1442×488 266 KB

5

@justin Any update on this? Thanks.

6

The <summary/> tag is just an empty tag, so that should be fine. Is that a calendar RSS feed? If so, it uses the air date, so that could explain why it’s in the future.

I’m not really sure what your using to parse the links out, but it should all be standard XML for the RSS.

7

No, it’s the History (watched) feed. I’m using FeedRoll Viewer to parse the feed. I am using it to display the last three episodes I’ve watched on my blog.

This is how the Letterboxd feed looks like on the blog:

Screenshot 2023-01-28 at 9.59.42 AM
Screenshot 2023-01-28 at 9.59.42 AM1466×810 67.1 KB

compared to the one from Trakt: As you see, the dates are also off even though I’ve set the timezone correctly.

Screenshot 2023-01-28 at 10.01.06 AM
Screenshot 2023-01-28 at 10.01.06 AM1440×824 68.4 KB

8

Bumping this up @justin

9

Can you post the RSS for the other feed so I can compare? The Trakt RSS should be pretty standard and was originally created to work well with IFTTT, but all the XML items should be valid RSS.

10

Sure. Here’s the one for Letterboxd. It works as expected with the parser I linked above.

11

Here is a comparison between Trakt and Letterboxd for a feed entry. They are quite different, but both are valid XML. As I mentioned, we designed this to work with IFTTT originally which is why we use this structure. It’s been like this for years, so not really something I can just completely change.

It looks like the parser you’re using is expecting different XML tags and data formats and that’s creating the issue.

<entry>
    <id>tag:trakt.tv,2005:Movie/4783/8827482938</id>
    <published>2023-02-10T22:46:10-05:00</published>
    <updated>2023-02-10T22:46:10-05:00</updated>
    <link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://trakt.tv/movies/kung-fu-panda-2008"/>
    <title>Kung Fu Panda (2008)</title>
    <summary>When the Valley of Peace is threatened, lazy Po the panda discovers his destiny as the "chosen one" and trains to become a kung fu hero, but transforming the unsleek slacker into a brave warrior won't be easy. It's up to Master Shifu and the Furious Five -- Tigress, Crane, Mantis, Viper and Monkey -- to give it a try.</summary>
    <content type="html">&lt;img src="https://walter.trakt.tv/images/movies/000/004/783/fanarts/thumb/22bd06524e.jpg" /&gt;When the Valley of Peace is threatened, lazy Po the panda discovers his destiny as the &amp;quot;chosen one&amp;quot; and trains to become a kung fu hero, but transforming the unsleek slacker into a brave warrior won&amp;#39;t be easy. It&amp;#39;s up to Master Shifu and the Furious Five -- Tigress, Crane, Mantis, Viper and Monkey -- to give it a try.</content>
    <media:content url="https://walter.trakt.tv/images/movies/000/004/783/posters/medium/be98d3ebdb.jpg"/>
    <media:thumbnail url="https://walter.trakt.tv/images/movies/000/004/783/posters/thumb/be98d3ebdb.jpg"/>
    <author>
        <name>justin</name>
    </author>
</entry>

<item>
	<title>Pathaan, 2023 - ★★</title>
	<link>https://letterboxd.com/pratikmovies/film/pathaan/</link>
	<guid isPermaLink="false">letterboxd-watch-352808219</guid>
	<pubDate>Mon, 13 Feb 2023 13:11:12 +1300</pubDate>
	<letterboxd:watchedDate>2023-02-12</letterboxd:watchedDate>
	<letterboxd:rewatch>No</letterboxd:rewatch>
	<letterboxd:filmTitle>Pathaan</letterboxd:filmTitle>
	<letterboxd:filmYear>2023</letterboxd:filmYear>
	<letterboxd:memberRating>2.0</letterboxd:memberRating>
	<description><![CDATA[ <p><img src="https://a.ltrbxd.com/resized/film-poster/7/7/8/8/8/5/778885-pathaan-0-600-0-900-crop.jpg?v=e78b8bace4"/></p> <p>Watched on Sunday February 12, 2023.</p> ]]></description>
	<dc:creator>Pratik</dc:creator>
</item>
12

Got it. Thanks. I don’t understand the technical details about RSS or XML but get why you chose the format that you did. I’ll try to look for a parser that will work with this feed or change how I display it on my blog.