Ruby get RSS feed won't get the latest feed

Question

I have a problem parsing an RSS feed. When I do this:

  feed = getFeed("http://example.com/rss)

If the feed content changes it don't update.

If I do it like this:

feed = getFeed("http://example.com/rss?" + Random.rand(20).to_s)

It works most of the time but not always.

getFeed() is implemented like this:

def getFeed(url)
   rss_content = ""
   open(url) do |f|
      rss_content = f.read
   end
   return rss_content
end

I used this in Sinatra with Ruby 1.9.3, if this make a difference. On my opinion somewhere it gets cached but I have no idea where.

Edit: Okey after 1/2 day running on the server it works with out a problem.

This previous discussion might help: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/6389255/rss-feed-how-to-recommend-an-update-interval — fmendez, Feb 23 '13 at 16:28
not sure because this mean that open() check this, and i don't think so — Sir l33tname, Feb 23 '13 at 16:32

score 2 · Accepted Answer · answered Feb 23 '13 at 17:58

This:

feed = getFeed("http://example.com/rss?" + Random.rand(20).to_s)

implies the problem is with caching, but Ruby, OpenURI and Sinatra shouldn't be caching anything. Perhaps your code is running behind a caching device or app that is handling outgoing requests as well as incoming?

This isn't the fix, but your code can be streamlined greatly:

def getFeed(url)
  open(url).read
end

Ruby get RSS feed won't get the latest feed

1 Answers1