# Testing/Specing rss feed generation validity?

**URL:** <https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/testing-specing-rss-feed-generation-validity/128470>\
**Category:** Rails\
**Created:** [February 7, 2008, 11:01pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/testing-specing-rss-feed-generation-validity/128470 "2008-02-07T23:01:07Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![rykkers](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/r/e5b9ba/32.png) [@rykkers](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/rykkers)\
**Post date:** [February 7, 2008, 11:01pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/testing-specing-rss-feed-generation-validity/128470/1 "2008-02-07T23:01:07Z")

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I’m working on a rails site with an RSS feed. We were testing last  
night, and I found that although Safari on my Mac was perfectly happy  
with the feed, my colleagues Mac wasn’t. So I ran it through the w3  
validation site to work out the bugs.

So now, I’d like to incorporate rss feed validation into my bag of  
Rails test/rspec tricks. Googling around I see that there’s a plugin  
to validate xhthl and css  
[http://agilewebdevelopment.com/plugins/assert\_valid\_asset](http://agilewebdevelopment.com/plugins/assert_valid_asset)

And someone has munged this into an RSpec matcher to validate xhtml at  
least.

I thought that that code might form a base to talk to the X3 RSS feed  
validator, but as I get into it it doesn’t look that straightforward.

I was just wondering if anyone had trod this path before, or knew of  
alternative plugins/gems to allow rss validation from a test or spec,  
or at the very least from ruby.

–  
Rick DeNatale

My blog on Ruby  
[http://talklikeaduck.denhaven2.com/](http://talklikeaduck.denhaven2.com/)

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![rykkers](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/r/e5b9ba/32.png) [@rykkers](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/rykkers)\
**Post date:** [February 8, 2008, 2:26am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/testing-specing-rss-feed-generation-validity/128470/2 "2008-02-08T02:26:15Z")

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On 2/7/08, Rick DeNatale [removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid) wrote:

> And someone has munged this into an RSpec matcher to validate xhtml at least.
> 
> I thought that that code might form a base to talk to the X3 RSS feed  
> validator, but as I get into it it doesn’t look that straightforward.
> 
> I was just wondering if anyone had trod this path before, or knew of  
> alternative plugins/gems to allow rss validation from a test or spec,  
> or at the very least from ruby.

You guys are too slow, I found the feedvalidator gem, which comes with  
test:unit assertions, a few minutes later I had a working rspec  
matcher.

Sweet!

–  
Rick DeNatale

My blog on Ruby  
[http://talklikeaduck.denhaven2.com/](http://talklikeaduck.denhaven2.com/)