Why the RSS Viewer webpart does not work with this RSS feed: http://www.warc.com/xml/news.asp ?

Question

The SharePoint 2007 RSS viewer does not work with this feed: http://www.warc.com/xml/news.asp (yet this rss feed works fine with any  rss reader).

I have the following error message "An unexpected error occured processing your request. Check the logs for details and correct the problem.".

According to several posts, this error is due to the web.config file which is not properly configured to take into account a proxy server.

However, we have no proxy server on our network and my web.config file has the default configuration.

Moreover, on my website,  any other RSS feed works fine with the SharePoint RSS Viewer.

I get this error message only when I try to use the following feed: http://www.warc.com/xml/news.asp.

Help will be appreciated,

Regards,

Answer 1

Hi

Check the sharepoint logs for the exact problem. In my experience, the RSS viewer webpart is quite buggy.

Regards,
Madhur

Answer 2

Hi

 

Please find below the content of the logs:

Thanks in advance for your help,

 

Code Block

11/26/2007 12:19:50.89  w3wp.exe (0x06B4)                        0x17A0 SharePoint Portal Server       WebParts                       8imh High     RssWebPart: Exception handed to HandleRuntimeException.HandleException System.Xml.XmlException: Root element is missing.     at System.Xml.XmlTextReaderImpl.Throw(Exception e)     at System.Xml.XmlTextReaderImpl.ThrowWithoutLineInfo(String res)     at System.Xml.XmlTextReaderImpl.ParseDocumentContent()     at System.Xml.XmlTextReaderImpl.Read()     at System.Xml.XmlTextReader.Read()     at Microsoft.SharePoint.WebControls.XmlUrlDataSource.FetchData(String requestUrl)     at Microsoft.SharePoint.WebControls.BaseXmlDataSource.Execute(String request)     at Microsoft.SharePoint.WebControls.BaseXmlDataSource.GetXmlDocument()     at Microsoft.SharePoint.WebPartPages.DataFormWebPart.GetHierarchicalDocument(IHierarchicalDataSource ds)     at Microsoft.SharePoint.WebPartPages.DataFormWebPart.GetHi... 
11/26/2007 12:19:50.89* w3wp.exe (0x06B4)                        0x17A0 SharePoint Portal Server       WebParts                       8imh High     ...erarchicalXPathNavigator(IHierarchicalDataSource ds)     at Microsoft.SharePoint.WebControls.SingleDataSource.GetXPathNavigatorInternal()     at Microsoft.SharePoint.WebControls.SingleDataSource.GetXPathNavigator()     at Microsoft.SharePoint.WebControls.SingleDataSource.GetXPathNavigator(IDataSource datasource, Boolean originalData)     at Microsoft.SharePoint.WebPartPages.DataFormWebPart.GetXPathNavigator(String viewPath)     at Microsoft.SharePoint.WebPartPages.DataFormWebPart.PrepareAndPerformTransform() 

 

 

Answer 3

Hello

The exception in XML Suggest that there is a problem with the scheme of RSS of that particular site. But this is my opinion only, it could turn out to be a bug in the webpart itself. Or, we can say that, this particular webpart requires a very strict conformity to the RSS schema which other RSS clients might be ignoring to increase the adaptability.

Regards,
Madhur

Answer 4

Thanks for your reply but I don't think that the XML schema is not correct.

I have carried out the following test:
- go to http://www.warc.com/xml/news.asp with my browser
- get the xml content and save it as a xml file
- move the xml file to a web server in my company so that it is available through the web
- test the SharePoint RSS Viewer with the URL corresponding to my new xml file
- And the RSS viewer displayed the feed PROPERLY !!!!

This error makes me crazy !

Can anyone confirm me that this feed (http://www.warc.com/xml/news.asp) does not work with the RSS Viewer WebPart in his/her SharePoint environment ?


Thanks in advance  for your help !

Answer 5

This is fixed !

Actually, when the RSS viewer webpart carries out a http request to retrieve a XML content from a RSS Feed data source, it does not include a "User-Agent" property in the header of the HTTP Request.

However, in our case, due security rules, an equipement (firewall or proxy?) in the company providing the RSS feed did not allow missing "User-Agent" properties and an empty xml stream was returned to the SP rss viewer. This is why I had this error message in SP the log "xml root is missing".

To conclude, the Warc company has kindly updated its  security rules so that  its RSS feed returns a proper XML content even if it is requested with a missing "User-Agent" Property and this fixed my problem.

By the way, I think my problem was also due to the fact that our SharePoint server is not connected to the web through a proxy server. Indeed, in this case, the proxy server would have added a user-agent property avoiding this kind of error.