FeedBurner and HTTPS website with self-signed certificate

[Kamus Hadenes]

Hello folks. i'm unable to add a website that has a self-signed
certificate to FeedBurner. The feed passes the validation, but
FeedBurner just refuses to add it. Is there any workaround? Thank you.

[Bengt Lüers]

I have just ran into this, too. I have an atom feed of the activity steam of a redmine instance which validates. The URL looks like this:

    https://<FQDN>/redmine/projects/<project-id>/activity.atom?key=<40-char-key>

When I try to add the feed to Feedburner, I get the following error:

    Received HTTP error code 400 while fetching source feed.

When I try to retrieve the feed using wget, I get an error about the self-signed certificate:

    $ LANG=en_US wget -vvvv https://<FQDN>/redmine/projects/<project-id>/activity.atom?key=<40-char-key>

    --2013-05-26 14:35:31--  https://<FQDN>/redmine/projects/<project-id>/activity.atom?key=<40-char-key>

    Resolving <FQDN> (<FQDN>)... <IPv4 Address>

    Connecting to <FQDN> (<FQDN>)|<IPv4 Address>|:443... connected.

    ERROR: cannot verify <FQDN>'s certificate, issued by '<Issuer>':

    Self-signed certificate encountered.

    To connect to <FQDN> insecurely, use `--no-check-certificate'.

Note that wget does not report an HTTP error code but refuses to continue without verifying the certificate. So the error message issued by feedburner seems at least misleading.

I have stumbled upon a solution which basically is to serve the feed without SSL via port 80 and all other content with SSL via port 443.

    http://binfalse.de/2010/07/google-does-not-like-self-signed-ssl-certs/

This solution needs but server-side configuration that is not an option in my case, since I do not have control over the server.

Kind Regards,
Bengt Lüers

[Matti Nescio]

On Sunday, 26 May 2013 15:55:15 UTC+3, Bengt Lüers wrote:

    https://<FQDN>/redmine/projects/<project-id>/activity.atom?key=<40-char-key>

When I try to add the feed to Feedburner, I get the following error:

That's no surprise, since feedburner simply doesn't support https. 

[Bengt Lüers]

A quick search proves you right. It's unfortunate that feedburner can't work with feeds at HTTPS URLs, since many bug/issue trackers are SSL secured. In my case I wanted to subscribe to such a feed by email using Feedburner.  This very recent (just 1 week old) blog entry on a work around exploiting the useragent of feedburner on the server side shows that this issue is relevant to other people, today, too:

    https://scheible.it/feedburner-und-https/