February 24, 2008
@ 08:03 PM
Comments [2]
RSS Bandit: Progress Report on Integrating with the Windows RSS Platform

I'm slowly working towards the goal of making RSS Bandit a desktop RSS client for Google Reader, NewsGator Online and Exchange (via the Windows RSS platform). Today I made some progress integrating with the Windows RSS platform but as with any integration story it is some good news and some bad news. The good news can be seen in the screen shot below

RSS Bandit and Internet Explorer sharing the same feed list

The good news is that for the most part the core application has been refactored to be able to transparently support loading feeds from sources such as the Windows RSS platform or from the RSS Bandit feed cache. It should take one or two more weekends and I can move on to adding similar support for synchronizing feeds from Google Reader.

The bad news is that using the Windows RSS platform has been a painful exercise. My current problem is that for some reason I can't fathom I can't receive events from the Windows RSS platform. I can write the same code and receive events from a standalone program but for some reason the event handlers aren't received triggered when the exact same code is running in RSS Bandit. The main problem I had turned out to have been due to a stupid oversight. With that figured out we're about 80% done with integration with the Windows RSS platform. There are lots of smaller issues too, such as the fact that there is no event that indicates an enclosure has finished being downloaded although the documentation seems to imply the FeedDownloadCompleted does double duty. Or the various exceptions that can occur when accessing properties of a feed including BadImageFormatException for accessing IFeed.Title if the underlying feed file has been corrupted somehow or a COMException complaining that the "Element not found" if you access IFeed.DownloadUrl before you've attempted to download the feed.

I've used up my budget of free time for coding this weekend so I'll start up again next weekend. In the meantime, if you have any tips on working with the Windows RSS platform from C#, don't hesitate to share.

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Categories: RSS Bandit

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Monday, 25 February 2008 03:04:54 (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)
I can't help with C# but wonder how the "Windows RSS platform" will cope with the 1000'ish feeds that my RSS Bandit handles with no problem. Will they all show up in all "Platform" enabled app's (for me currently only Outlook & IE)?
Robin Capper
Monday, 25 February 2008 04:26:49 (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)
Your current RSS Bandit feeds won't be migrated to using the Windows RSS platform. Instead you now have the choice of using RSS Bandit to add, read and delete feeds shared by the Windows RSS platform. We will also give similar choice with regards to Google Reader and NewsGator Online.

I have no idea how well the Windows RSS platform handles subscriptions in the 1000s of feeds.
Dare Obasanjo
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