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WolfShade
Legend
March 14, 2018
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Internet Exploder 11 thinks • is an undefined entity

Hello, all,

I am testing .rss files on our staging environment (worked flawlessly in dev), and for some reason FireFox isn't displaying any of the items.  So I try it in IE11, and I get the following:

Internet  Explorer cannot display this feed

This feed contains code errors.

Go back to the previous page.
More information

Reference to undefined entity 'bull'.
Line: 17 Character: 116

   <description>&lt;span style&#x3d;&quot;font-weight&#x3a; bold&#x3b;&quot;&gt;OFFICIAL&#x3a;&lt;&#x2f;span&gt;  &bull; Course Name&#x3a; Mastering Emotional Intelligence &bull;&#x9;Dates&#x3a; 21 March 2018 &bull;&#x9;Time&#x3a; 0800-1600 &bull;&#x9;Place&#x3a; Building 1948, Room 117 &#x28;Satellite Pharmacy&#x29; &bull;&#x9;Cost&#x3a; None &bull;&#x9;Attire&#x3a; Business casual &#x28;civilian &&#x23;8230&#x3b;</description>

IE doesn't recognize &bull; from HTML4.  I'm using ColdFusion EncodeForHTML() to generate the XML for my RSS, so that is where the &bull; is coming from.

Any suggestions?

V/r,

^ _ ^

    Ce sujet a été fermé aux réponses.
    Meilleure réponse par Jon Fritz

    Getting some progress.  At least FF got the first three displayed.  But now IE isn't making any sense.

    Whitespace is not allowed at this location.
    Line: 34 Character: 50

       <title>$15 Cardinals Ticket (includes hotdog & soda), Airmen Bowl Free & more</title>

    What the heck?  What whitespace??

    And the title isn't going through EncodeForHTML() - that's only being used on the description.  Everything else is clear-text.

    V/r,

    ^ _ ^


    Are those ampersands within the <title> set as & in the actual code?

    It might think you're trying to make entities with them if they're not.

    1 commentaire

    Jon Fritz
    Community Expert
    Community Expert
    March 14, 2018

    Are you trying to show your code as html text within your <description></description> tagset of the RSS feed?

    WolfShade
    WolfShadeAuteur
    Legend
    March 14, 2018

    Yes.  The feed is for PA Announcements, and occasionally they like to use bullet points for highlighting things.  I assumed that it would parse properly in browser.  But FF isn't displaying anything after the initial title (USTRANSCOM PA Announcements), and IE is balking at an old HTML4 Named Entity.

    V/r,

    ^ _ ^

    WolfShade
    WolfShadeAuteur
    Legend
    March 14, 2018

    Are those ampersands within the <title> set as & in the actual code?

    It might think you're trying to make entities with them if they're not.


    Okay.. it takes me a few replace() lines to get it to work, and I'm sure someone in the near future will try to add an announcement with some other special character that will break it, but it works for now. 

    I'm replacing & with &, &rsquo; with &apos;, ’ with &apos;, ’ with &apos;, and &bull; with &#8226;.  I'm getting 11 records from the query, and 11 announcements are appearing in both IE and FF.

    **headdesk** **headdesk** **headdesk** **headdesk** **headdesk**

    **headdesk**

    Thank you for looking at this, Jon.

    V/r,

    ^ _ ^