Sort Order in C9 RSS? | The Coffeehouse

mabster

What order (if any) is the Channel9 RSS feed sorted by?

New items almost never appear at the top of the list - they're always buried deep within the list.

Even now if I click on the XML icon at the bottom of the main page, the first item is "Meet the new Mobile PC Team" - yet there are forum posts in the feed that have been created since then.

It's not a big deal, but it does make it easier if the new items are at the top of the feed.

Cheers,
Matt

Maurits
AKA Matthew van Eerde

? No repro...
http://channel9.msdn.com/rss.aspx

What RSS reader are you using to view the feed? Maybe it's alphabetizing the entries?

mabster

Maurits wrote:
? No repro...
http://channel9.msdn.com/rss.aspx

What RSS reader are you using to view the feed? Maybe it's alphabetizing the entries?

You're right - it's not doing that now. I actually visited that URL in IE to make sure before I posted my original question, so the sort order must actually change within the XML.

For what it's worth, I use SharpReader, which sorts the items in the order they appear within the XML. So if I don't specifically tell it to sort by date, it will show unread items sometimes deep within the list of items, rather than at the top.

Very strange. Can someone from C9 confirm that the order of items within your feed XML changes? It certainly looks to be ordered by date right now, but it's often not.

mabster

Just checked it again now, and the Mobile PC Team video is the topmost item again! So it has reordered itself within the last few minutes.

I can take a screenie of IE showing the XML if you like.

DevilsRejection
addicted to rss

I too in feed demon sometimes get the same issues you are talking about.

With a video from last year showing up on top for some strange reason when I subscibe to the video rss link.

mabster

DevilsRejection wrote:
I too in feed demon sometimes get the same issues you are talking about.

With a video from last year showing up on top for some strange reason when I subscibe to the video rss link.

Now I don't feel so lonely.

I think I've found something though: When I visit the /rss.aspx file and the "Mobile PC Team" item is at the top, it only includes videos, rather than items from across the whole site (forum posts, screencasts etc).

So it almost looks like the /rss.aspx file is switching between videos-only and whole-site feeds at random intervals.

Charles
Welcome Change

The default sort order of RSS is last post. The RSS is fully sortable. Go to the video forum, for example, sort the threads according to your preference (using the sort drop down). Then, click on the Xml icon. Note the URL of the RSS feed.

C

mabster

Charles wrote:

The default sort order of RSS is last post. The RSS is fully sortable. Go to the video forum, for example, sort the threads according to your preference (using the sort drop down). Then, click on the Xml icon. Note the URL of the RSS feed.

Charles,

This is the behaviour I just observed:

1. With no browser windows open, I clicked Start|Run and entered http://channel9.msdn.com/rss.aspx, then hit OK. The XML popped up in IE, and the topmost item was the most recent forum post. All good.

2. I left that browser open, and opened another window to this forum post, to see if there were any more replies.

3. I then switched back to the original browser window with the feed's XML showing, and hit F5 to refresh it. It now shows the Mobile PC Team item as the first item, and only shows videos.

It's almost as if the act of visiting Channel9 plays around with the /rss.aspx file's response.

Matt

Charles
Welcome Change

Fascinating. This is a bug, most likely with caching (specifically, with how we are inserting named objects into the RSS cache...). I will look into this tomorrow.

Thanks for the repro steps.

C

mabster

Charles wrote:
Fascinating. This is a bug, most likely with caching (specifically, with how we are inserting named objects into the RSS cache...). I will look into this tomorrow.

Thanks for the repro steps.

C

Do I get a Channel9 Guy or what? Wink

Charles
Welcome Change

mabster wrote:

Charles wrote: Fascinating. This is a bug, most likely with caching (specifically, with how we are inserting named objects into the RSS cache...). I will look into this tomorrow.

Thanks for the repro steps.

C

Do I get a Channel9 Guy or what?