We're using NewsFeeds module 5.00.01 on DNN 8.something and it has been working fine so long as we stick to the Default transformation. Now we're trying to read a Google Alerts feed, which has <link> elements a little different to the norm. To do this we think we need a custom Transformation to handle the slightly unusual RSS feed syntax, but I find that even if I copy Default.xsl to the custom transformations folder it generates an error, even before I make my modifications.
I'm no RSS expert, but what I've seen is that most feeds come with a link element like:
<link>http://somewhere.com/foo</link>
While the Google Alerts feed has an element like this:
<link href="http://somewhere.com/foo"></link>
DesktopModules/News/Resources/Transformations/Default.xsl uses the link attribute like this:
<a href="{link}">
and this causes the <a> generated in the resultant feed to have an empty href attribute, so it simply links back to the current page instead of out to the news site. I believe the syntax I should use is something like:
<a href="{link/@href}">
(but please correct me if I'm wrong!) .. so I copy Default.xsl to Portals/0/NewsFeeds/Resources/Transformations/GoogleAlerts.xsl and make my minor modification, edit the feed and select GoogleAlerts.xsl from the Feed Transformation dropdown, and immediately the feed fails to render, and this is logged in the Portal log file:
2016-10-20 09:53:09,693 [Server][Thread:18][ERROR] DotNetNuke.Services.Exceptions.Exceptions - FriendlyMessage="Feed errors:<br />Feed '<a href="https://www.google.com/alerts/feeds/18051535404781326719/17921738013404500860">https://www.google.com/alerts/feeds/18051535404781326719/17921738013404500860</a>' could not be loaded. Error: Download error (Data at the root level is invalid. Line 1, position 1.)<br />" ctrl="ASP.desktopmodules_news_rssmodule_ascx" exc="System.Exception: Feed Errors"
Changing the Transformation dropdown back to the original Default makes it immediately start rendering again. Changing the feed URL doesn't help. It's as if there is some fatal error reading any custom transformation xsl file.
Can anyone corroborate this experience, or suggest what we might be doing wrong?