Trac RSS feeds lack GUID elements

[exarkun@…]

RSS 2.0 has per-item guids. These let clients unambiguously determine the identity of feed items and do such things as handle read/unread status correctly. Trac should include a guid element in each item element in its feeds.

[anonymous]

I've attached a patch that adds a guid element to the Timeline feed... The guid value is a md5 hash build from the link to, and the date of, the event (hence, it is no PermaLink, i.e. isPermaLink="false"!!)
The patches apply to Timeline.py and timeline_rss.cs of Trac version 0.9.6...

To find out more about the patch, have a look at ​http://dawis2.icb.uni-due.de/jpddtools/AddGuidToTimelineFeedPatch.html

nik4536

[cmlenz]

I'd rather see us support permalinks for all entry instead of artificial GUIDs. Trunk already does that for tickets, and we should probably do the same for ticket changes.

[mgood]

Replying to anonymous:

I've attached a patch that adds a guid element to the Timeline feed...

It's easier if you attach a single patch file instead of separate diffs for each file you changed. See TracDev/SubmittingPatches.

I agree with cmlenz that we should use permalinks here. It seems like this would require a change to the return value of ITimelineEventProvider.get_timeline_events so each module could provide its own permalinks, so this should probably be made before the 0.10 release, or post-poned to 0.11.

[cmlenz]

Replying to mgood:

I agree with cmlenz that we should use permalinks here. It seems like this would
require a change to the return value of ITimelineEventProvider.get_timeline_events
so each module could provide its own permalinks, so this should probably be made
before the 0.10 release, or post-poned to 0.11.

I don't see why an interface change would be needed. If it makes sense for the RSS feed to use a link to a specific version/comment of a page, why shouldn't the timeline itself do the same? I.e. the providers should return unique links for the events, and the timeline RSS feed just reuses those for the permalinks.

[eblot]

I tried to have a look at this ticket. I'm attaching a patch.

For the timeline feed, we need to add an extra information to the HDF: the date, unformatted.
This is required for wiki page edition, as the link is always the same for any version of the same wiki page, which would make the guid not unique.

For the feed an event is always unique:

• report: ticket number
• query: ticket number
• ticket: ticket and comment number
• repository log: version number (only tested w/ SVN)

I've submitted 5 feed samples (on for each feed source) to the ​w3c validator and all of them have been repored as valid, without warnings.

[eblot]

Proposed patch against r3813 to support RSS guids

[eblot]

As cmlenz noticed (on IRC) guids should not be declared as permalinks, as ticket&wiki pages can be edited/deleted which mean that URL can stop to point to valid pages or point to pages whose content has changed.

[eblot]

Patch has been commited in r3814 and r3815, without support for permalinks