# … unencoding troubles with FeedTools

**URL:** <https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/8230-unencoding-troubles-with-feedtools/80313>\
**Category:** Ruby\
**Created:** [December 23, 2006, 8:49pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/8230-unencoding-troubles-with-feedtools/80313 "2006-12-23T20:49:54Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 5\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![robertjames](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/r/e9c0ed/32.png) [@robertjames](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/robertjames)\
**Post date:** [December 23, 2006, 8:49pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/8230-unencoding-troubles-with-feedtools/80313/1 "2006-12-23T20:49:54Z")

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I’ve hunted around for a solution to this one, but it’s really hard to  
find, because the string gets munched in google - try searching for  
… !

When using FeedTools, I’m finding that some feeds are giving me encoded  
strings like this, and I can’t seem to unencode them. Stuff like ’  
is ok- FeedTools::HtmlHelper.unescape\_entities deals fine with them, but  
these frickin … things are driving me nuts.

Anyone able to give me an early Christmas present by helping me out?

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![robertjames](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/r/e9c0ed/32.png) [@robertjames](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/robertjames)\
**Post date:** [December 24, 2006, 3:40am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/8230-unencoding-troubles-with-feedtools/80313/2 "2006-12-24T03:40:40Z")

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Robert J. wrote:

> I’ve hunted around for a solution to this one, but it’s really hard to  
> find, because the string gets munched in google - try searching for  
> … !
> 
> Anyone able to give me an early Christmas present by helping me out?

Robert- What version of FeedTools are you using and can you provide a  
URL that has these entities in it?

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![robertjames](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/r/e9c0ed/32.png) [@robertjames](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/robertjames)\
**Post date:** [December 24, 2006, 11:48am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/8230-unencoding-troubles-with-feedtools/80313/3 "2006-12-24T11:48:52Z")

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Michael Moen wrote:

> Robert J. wrote:
> 
> > I’ve hunted around for a solution to this one, but it’s really hard to  
> > find, because the string gets munched in google - try searching for  
> > … !
> > 
> > Anyone able to give me an early Christmas present by helping me out?
> 
> Robert- What version of FeedTools are you using and can you provide a  
> URL that has these entities in it?

Thanks for listening Michael - sorry for not giving more details  
initially.

I’m using FeedTools from a gem install - 0.2.26

A feed that’s being bad is [http://grahamdickie.edublogs.org/feed/](http://grahamdickie.edublogs.org/feed/) - It’s  
the title of the post “I can’t believe it’s not…”. There are others,  
but this one is definitely doing it!

Cheers

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![robertjames](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/r/e9c0ed/32.png) [@robertjames](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/robertjames)\
**Post date:** [December 26, 2006, 7:40pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/8230-unencoding-troubles-with-feedtools/80313/4 "2006-12-26T19:40:54Z")

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Robert J. wrote:

> I can’t seem to unencode them. Stuff like ’  
> is ok- FeedTools::HtmlHelper.unescape\_entities deals fine with them, but  
> these frickin … things are driving me nuts.
> 
> Anyone able to give me an early Christmas present by helping me out?

irb(main):005:0\> “n …”.gsub %r{&#(\d+);} do  
irb(main):006:1\* [Integer($1)].pack(‘U\*’)  
irb(main):007:1\> end  
=\> “n \342\200\246”  
irb(main):008:0\> puts “n \342\200\246”  
n …  
=\> nil

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![robertjames](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/r/e9c0ed/32.png) [@robertjames](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/robertjames)\
**Post date:** [December 24, 2006, 5:56pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/8230-unencoding-troubles-with-feedtools/80313/5 "2006-12-24T17:56:21Z")

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Robert J. wrote:

> I’m using FeedTools from a gem install - 0.2.26
> 
> A feed that’s being bad is [http://grahamdickie.edublogs.org/feed/](http://grahamdickie.edublogs.org/feed/) - It’s  
> the title of the post “I can’t believe it’s not…”. There are others,  
> but this one is definitely doing it!

Robert- I tried this in Feed Harvest, it’s using FeedTools from svn with  
an unrelated patch. Here’s a shot of it in the UI  
[http://moensolutions.com/fh-elipsis.png](http://moensolutions.com/fh-elipsis.png)

You may want to try building your gem from the source, I’m not sure why  
they aren’t in sync, other than I know Bob has been busy with other  
prjects.

svn co svn://rubyforge.org/var/svn/feedtools/trunk feedtools  
cd feedtools  
rake gem  
sudo gem install pkg/feedtools-0.2.27.gem

Good Luck