Decide when an entry is new

[Tilman Bender-2]

Hi there,

As mentioned before I am working on a mobile RSS-Reader with a server
component to do conversion from various RSS flavors to Atom 1.0.

Besides that I also want to do the feed-polling on the server and  
notify the mobile
device via push. This is mainly done to save resources on the mobile  
device.
That means I will have to decide when/if there are new entries  
available and notify the mobile app accordingly.

Scenario is like this:
1. Server polls the feed, converts it to Atom 1.0 and notifies the  
mobile app.
2. Mobile app fetches the newly created Atom document
3. The user reads some articles.
4. Server polls again and finds, that there are new articles. Again:  
conversion, notification
5. Mobile app fetches the newly created Atom document.

Now here is the problem: As the atom document is newly created, even the
old articles that have already been read on the mobile device, will  
now have a new id (right?).

That leaves me with the problem how to decide if an article is really  
unread.

Please let me tap into your experience: How do you folks handle this  
problem
in your apps? Is it really existent or a mere academic issue?

I know this is not ROME specific, but I don't know of a better place  
to post
general questions regarding syndication.

Thanks in advance!

Till




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[Nick Lothian]

[snip]

>
> Scenario is like this:
> 1. Server polls the feed, converts it to Atom 1.0 and notifies the
> mobile app.
> 2. Mobile app fetches the newly created Atom document
> 3. The user reads some articles.
> 4. Server polls again and finds, that there are new articles. Again:
> conversion, notification
> 5. Mobile app fetches the newly created Atom document.
>
> Now here is the problem: As the atom document is newly created, even
> the
> old articles that have already been read on the mobile device, will
> now have a new id (right?).
>

Wrong.

The same Atom ID should always refer to the same entry (ie, it should never change). When we convert from RSS feeds to Atom I think we use the GUID property or the URL. In both cases this shouldn't change


> That leaves me with the problem how to decide if an article is really
> unread.
>
> Please let me tap into your experience: How do you folks handle this
> problem
> in your apps? Is it really existent or a mere academic issue?
>

It's a real problem.

Generally Atom IDs are pretty reliable, and if you are dealing with RSS then using the entry URL as a key is reasonably safe.


Nick

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