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I manage an atom feed that needs to be able to accommodate revisions to articles and somehow have client feed readers acknowledge the update. Currently the only thing I can do is make an entire new entry in my feed however that's not the desired outcome.

I thought I'd be able to update the time stamp on the updated and/or published element of the entry and the readers would handle the update appropriately. However all my testing with google reader and various other feed readers are ignoring my change.

Any thoughts? Is there something I'm missing?

Dan Lowe
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Brian
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2 Answers2

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SELF FIX

Turns out the issue was a few things. 1) A few of the readers didn't support updating existing articles. 2) Google reader does support updating an article however it's on it own time cycle that google dictates. The actual length of time that google reader checks for updates is unknown.

I hope the following link helps anyone else. http://www.google.com/support/reader/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=70642

Brian
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  • google link is gone (and not on archive.org either)... could you find alternative or elaborate on what it was clearing up? – Matija Nalis Nov 14 '13 at 01:20
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Are you using the correct format for the date in the updated element?

It should be according to the rules specified by RFC 3339.

Examples:

<updated>2003-12-13T18:30:02Z</updated>
<updated>2003-12-13T18:30:02.25Z</updated>
<updated>2003-12-13T18:30:02+01:00</updated>
<updated>2003-12-13T18:30:02.25+01:00</updated>

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atom_(standard)#Date_formats

And more from the spec: http://www.atomenabled.org/developers/syndication/atom-format-spec.php#date.constructs

Jason Gennaro
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  • I thought this was going to be the issue but no, i'm using the right date format. thanks for the prompt response. – Brian Aug 22 '11 at 02:57