Atom/RSS Reader Bug, Relative Link

By Xah Lee. Date: . Last updated: .

many ATOM/RSS readers don't understand relative link, and ignore xml:base. Resolving relative link is required by spec.

〔see Atom Webfeed Tutorial〕

Here's history

Google RSS Reader Relative Links Bug

I just discovered bugs in rss aggregator in google.com, my.yahoo.com, my.msn.com .

For my.msn.com, it won't understand validated atom 1.

For google.com, it won't understand relative links unless you have xml:base in your atom.xml.

For yahoo.com, it won't understand relative links, period, regardless whether you have xml:base.

According to the Atom spec, a atom doc without explicit xml:base should take the base as the path the current URL. (just as with HTML files)

So, it seems to me google's behavior is wrong.

Google RSS Reader fixed Relative Links Bug

2012-04-05 Google's feed reader fixed the relative link bug.

Atom Spec on Base URL

rfc4287 base uri 2023-12-02 4c6F
rfc4287 base uri 2023-12-02 https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc4287#section-2
rfc3986 base uri 2023-12-02 vPTHg
rfc3986 base uri 2023-12-02 vPTHg https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc3986#section-5
rfc3986 base uri 2023-12-02 9MwTH
rfc3986 base uri 2023-12-02 9MwTH https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc3986#section-5

Elfeed Relative Links Bug

2014-07-18 recently, Christopher Wellons's feed reader elfeed (https://github.com/skeeto/elfeed) also had this problem. (See bug https://github.com/skeeto/elfeed/issues/37) It has been fixed since.

Mastodon Bot Feed Reader Relative Links Bug

a mastodon bot for emacs feed, have this bug.

rss reader relative link bug 2018-09-06 e79a4
rss reader relative link bug 2018-09-06