Recently, as I have mentioned in this post, I've created an iPhone app for the school. It's had it's problems though (read the highlighted post) that have been driving me mad.
However, now I seem to be getting to the bottom of the problem. The feed causing the problem is the main website feed - I know this because the app crashes when loading, and the main website feed is the one loaded by default. It isn't the video feed, or the podcast feed. Checking the main website feed using a feed validation service (like this one) brings up the following errors;
This feed does not validate.
line 62, column 0: length attribute of enclosure must be a positive integer [help]
<enclosure url="http://www.porchester.notts.sch.uk/files/hotseat_mariam_lucy ...
In addition, interoperability with the widest range of feed readers could be improved by implementing the following recommendation.
line 132, column 0: Missing atom:link with rel="self" [help]
</channel>
Now the line 132 message is not that important as it does not cause the feed to crash the app - the problem is the first message. The <enclosure> issue.
Using Typepad (our school website hosts) allows us lots of great features, one of which is the automatic conversion of an mp3 file into an embedded player within the post. Unfortunately though, this is what is causing the problem as the full code for this is;
<enclosure url="http://www.porchester.notts.sch.uk/files/hotseat_mariam_lucy_bernard.mp3" type="audio/mpeg" length="unknown" />
and it's just that last attribute - the length attribute - that is crashing the app. The length attribute has to be a postive integer, so "unknown" kicks up an error, and that error causes all the problems.
I've posted a help ticket with Typepad, and their prompt response was...
"Thanks for contacting us - we're here to help!...the one issue that is actually causing the feed not to validate is the one about the length attribute of the enclosure - this refers to audio files uploaded in your posts. This is a bug we are working to fix"
So, now I just have to sit and wait, hope the bug is fixed, so that the feed validates, so that the app works without crashing. And I can now do nothing about any of this. It is all out of my control. I just hope it gets sorted soon.
