GeoRSS Feed Widget - Does not load RSS feeds other than ESRI's earthquake example

[JustinAvery]

Greetings All,

I'm working on an internal Flex 3 web application using only pre-compiled widgets from esri and the esri-user community at large. I'm not a programmer or coder by any stretch, so I need to use the pre-compiled widgets. I've managed to cobble the web app together by altering some of the "abc_wdiget.xml", config.xml, and default and index.html files, but that's about the limit with respect to my web coding experience.

I am currently trying to incorporate a weather RSS feed into my web app. The earthquake RSS feed works just fine within the app, but when I open the GeoRSS widget's .xml file, and change the "source" text from "http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/catalogs/eqs7day-M5.xml" to "http://www.weatheroffice.gc.ca/rss/city/mb-38_e.xml", the GeoRSS widget opens but displays a "Loading" icon and seems to stall out. I've tried the same approach with a few RSS feeds that successfully open in IE or Firefox, but I can't seem to get them working in the web app. They all stall at the "Loading" icon.

I've read through some of the other threads regarding GeoRSS feeds not working, but these seem to be geared towards those who are editing and compiling their own mxml files, and also have access to whatever is pushing the RSS feed out. I have no such capability or access, so I'm trying to do what I can without having to get elbow deep into coding.

Can somebody boil it down to basics for me: What is preventing the RSS feed from being consumed in the web app if I alter only the widget's .xml file to point at another RSS feed? Is there a relatively painless way of consuming other RSS feeds (ie. without having to compile or write code from scratch)?

I apologize if this is a simplistic question, but I appreciate any feedback - the good, bad, or ugly (maybe not ugly so much).

Cheers,

Justin

[AnthonyGiles]

Justin,

Are you sure the RSS feed is a GeoRSS feed as looking at the source to the .xml there is no location information.

Have a look at this wiki page on GeoRSS:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georss

Regards

Anthony

[JustinAvery]

Justin,

Are you sure the RSS feed is a GeoRSS feed as looking at the source to the .xml there is no location information.

Have a look at this wiki page on GeoRSS:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georss

Regards

Anthony

Hi Anthony,

Thanks for the response. The feed that I am trying to consume doesn't appear to have a spatial component.

However, I read in another thread that the GeoRSS Widget doesn't really care if the feed is spatial or non-spatial. If the feed is non-spatial, I remember reading that the widget treats it as a normal non-spatial feed and still brings it in. I can't seem to find the thread, but it was only in the past couple of days that I read it. I'll take another look for it and will post the link if I can find it.

EDIT: Found the thread: http://forums.arcgis.com/threads/65201-Converting-the-GeoRSS-widget-to-just-an-RSS-widget?highlight=...

Cheers,

Justin

[AnthonyGiles · Accepted solution]

Justin,

I am not sure what is wrong with the feed you are trying, there must be some tag or namespace that the widget does not like. A straight news feed from reuters will display alright with no geo info. This is something that the ESRI flex team should look into.

Regards

Anthony

[JustinAvery]

Justin,

I am not sure what is wrong with the feed you are trying, there must be some tag or namespace that the widget does not like. A straight news feed from reuters will display alright with no geo info. This is something that the ESRI flex team should look into.

Regards

Anthony

Anthony,

I tried one of the Reuters feeds after reading your last response, just to make sure I wasn't doing anything weird within the widget's xml file. Lo and behold, the Reuters feed works within my web app. I'll submit this to the flex development folks and see if they can provide some guidance. Thanks for your help with this.

Cheers,

Justin