Dynamic field does not show content in 2.3.5?

[james zuelow]

Hello -

Brand new user for Concerto.

I've installed the 2.3.5 package on Debian Jessie (oldstable) and have everything running fine except Weather and RSS feeds.

I'm not at all worried about the weather package, as it only reports the current temperature.

But I do like the RSS feeds, because I can pull more detailed weather info from NOAA (for example here:  http://w1.weather.gov/xml/current_obs/PAJN.rss)

When I add the RSS content on my Concerto install, I see the RSS content in the preview.  That preview changes immediately if I change the HTML tags in the blacklist field.  So I am confident that the RSS plugin is retrieving the content, at least at that step.

After adding the RSS content, if I browse content and return to the feed I do see a preview.  So it looks like it is still working at that point.

But if I build a template with a dynamic field, and then build a screen for that template, and then subscribe the screen to the feed with the RSS content, no RSS content is displayed at all.

Graphics, text and time fields work as advertised though.

Here are my versions:

Concerto (installed from Debian package):  concerto-full 2.3.5
concerto_simple_rss:  gem version 1.1

Various browsers tested (Edge, IE, Firefox, Chrome, Konqueror)

Is there a trick to getting RSS text information actually displayed on screen? 

What I mean by "trick" is something that might not be in the existing howtos, but might still be required.  A good example is that custom templates won't display content until they have either a background image or custom CSS.  I found that "trick" by searching this group.  But I have been so far unsuccessful in finding something similar for dynamic field types, although I see plenty of people talking about their RSS feeds displayed incorrectly.  (At this point, I don't even mind if the field is displayed incorrectly!  Something is better than nothing.)

I am fairly familiar with Debian and Apache on Debian.  I don't work with Ruby much at all, and of course I've just started with Concerto.

There is nothing painfully obvious such as permission errors, etc.

If you want to see contents of particular files, etc. I will post them.  For the moment I don't know where to start looking at things.

Thanks!

James

[Marvin Frederickson]

RSS shows up in a "text" type of field.  Also make sure you have the font color different from the template background color.

[james zuelow]

That's interesting.  You and I must be running different versions of Concerto.  I can't display an RSS item on a text field - the system won't allow it.

If I have an RSS Feed with one active RSS item in the feed, and then create a template & screen with one text field and one dynamic field, and finally subscribe each field to the RSS feed I get:

Text field:  0 approved items  (nothing displayed)  - makes sense to me, as Text is for static text items.
Dynamic field: 1 approved items (but, unfortunately nothing displayed on screen.) - makes sense to me, as Weather and RSS are supposed to be "dynamic" items.  (At least that is the observed behavior I see:  A Concerto system always shows "0 approved items" for Weather or RSS feeds subscribed to anything other than a dynamic field.)

I am currently running 2.3.6, after the most recent version was released as a .deb.

[james zuelow]

OK.  Is my Concerto server somehow different, in that I can't put weather or RSS feeds on a "text" field, and have to use "dynamic" instead?

If there is a configuration I can trigger somewhere a clue would be appreciated.

Thanks!

[Marvin Frederickson]

James,

RSS and Weather are considered dynamic content.  But what that means is that periodically they generate "child content" of kind (or type) "text".

RSS generation assigns a type of HtmlText...

https://github.com/concerto/concerto-simple-rss/blob/master/app/models/simple_rss.rb#L68

Which is defined as type kind, "Text"...

https://github.com/concerto/concerto/blob/master/app/models/html_text.rb#L10

Which is what the Text field in the templates are set up to display

So it is probably some other reason as to why your RSS feeds are not displaying on your screen.  Usually related to subscriptions and approvals...

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[james zuelow]

Unfortunately, my Concerto system (2.3.6 Debian packages) won't allow this.

If I subscribe to Weather or RSS on a Dynamic field, I get "X approved items" where X is the number of approved items in the feed.

If I subscribe to Weather or RSS on a Text field, I get "0 approved items" regardless of the approval status of items in the feed.

I can replicate this behavior on other types of feeds too.  For example, attempting to post a graphics item to a text feed results in exactly the same experience.

And to me, _this_makes_sense_ because otherwise why have a dynamic feed defined at all if we're just going to use text anyway?  (Maybe I feel that way because I prefer to work in Perl, where you'll get warnings about variables defined but not used.)

I understand how to approve items.  I've worked out how the RSS feeds use the hidden sub-items to retrieve content, so a single RSS item on an RSS feed will result in "2 approved items."  I have a graphics feed in production at CBJ, used by the city clerk.  The harbors wants to use the system, but they want weather data and that's what I'm trying to resolve.

So I'll make an educated guess here, and ask if at some point in the past you've edited some part of your Concerto system to allow dynamic content on a text field.  If so, just let me know what that is and I'll add it to my notes.  Or, there is some undocumented 'trick' that I'm missing.  (Like the fact that you must have a background image or CSS in a template to show anything at all.  I was confused about that until I ran across that in this group.)

Anyway, here is what I see.  If you catch an error that I've made, please point it out.  Screen shots to follow.

Below is an example of a test template I built, displayed on a screen:



Each field is subscribed to the same two feeds, one of them an RSS feed the other one plain text.


Here is the RSS_TEST feed.  I've been pretty liberal with allowed content types:



If I edit the RSS feed, I see the preview, so I am confident that the actual RSS updates are working:



Here's the test text feed, also pretty liberal with the content types as I've been experimenting:




So let's return to the screen and take a peek at how it looks:

The top feed is dynamic content.  It says that I have approved RSS items, but no approved text items.  (Which, again, _Just_Makes_Sense_ to me.  RSS is dynamic, right?)



The ticker feed says that no RSS is approved, but the text is approved.  Unfortunately the ticker doesn't tick, so it's just like a text feed.



And finally, the text field says no RSS approved (because RSS is dynamic content, and goes on a dynamic field?), but my text is approved:



And the screen preview shows this.  Notice that the text appears where it shows up as approved, but the Dynamic feed does not ever appear.




And here is the template for the screen so you can see I'm not doing the white-on-white CSS error you suggested earlier:

[Marvin Frederickson]

It looks like the problem might be that your "Text" field is mapped to the "Ticker" kind instead of the "Text" kind.  And RSS (including weather) produces "Text" content.

You can fix that under Manage Fields when you edit a template.

None of Concerto's "out of the box" templates include a dynamic field.  I don't believe that any template should.

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