Review of Leaflet's RSS feed

Start with the sample RSS feed at https://davew.leaflet.pub/rss and compare its item title, description, content:encoded, and guid elements with the RSS 2.0 requirements linked in the issue. Review the provided encodeXml JavaScript function and the feed-generation entry point it maps to. Done means the feed has portable descriptions, valid required metadata, and a correctly represented permalink GUID.

I have been DM'ing with the developer of Leaflet and made sure he'd welcome this review, and he said yes.

I like their work so much I want it to be part of our ecosystem, and I want to be part of theirs. This is the web philosophy imho.

If there are questions or suggestions, please add a comment.

Here's a test feed

https://davew.leaflet.pub/rss

I ran the source through a linter, and pasted the result below. Easier to work with. ;-)

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<rss version="2.0"
    xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/"
    xmlns:content="http://purl.org/rss/1.0/modules/content/"
    xmlns:atom="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom">
    <channel>
        <title>Let’s try leaflet</title>
        <link>https://davew.leaflet.pub</link>
        <description>I want to have a try and hopefully some fun.</description>
        <lastBuildDate>Thu, 30 Jul 2026 18:06:57 GMT</lastBuildDate>
        <docs>https://validator.w3.org/feed/docs/rss2.html</docs>
        <generator>https://github.com/jpmonette/feed</generator>
        <language>en</language>
        <atom:link href="https://davew.leaflet.pub/rss" rel="self" type="application/rss+xml"/>
        <item>
            <link>https://davew.leaflet.pub/3mruzs43bys26</link>
            <guid isPermaLink="false">https://davew.leaflet.pub/3mruzs43bys26</guid>
            <pubDate>Thu, 30 Jul 2026 18:06:57 GMT</pubDate>
            <content:encoded>
                <![CDATA[<div class="postContent footnote-scope flex flex-col"><p style="font-size:1em"><span class="                                                 ">this is a draft i would like to publish. no title, no optional description</span></p></div>]]>
            </content:encoded>
        </item>
        <item>
            <link>https://davew.leaflet.pub/3mruzom5rm223</link>
            <guid isPermaLink="false">https://davew.leaflet.pub/3mruzom5rm223</guid>
            <pubDate>Thu, 30 Jul 2026 18:05:00 GMT</pubDate>
            <content:encoded>
                <![CDATA[<div class="postContent footnote-scope flex flex-col"><p style="font-size:1em"><span class="                                                 ">this is a post that has neither a title or description, but it does have a body, let&#x27;s see how this shows up in RSS. </span></p></div>]]>
            </content:encoded>
        </item>
        <item>
            <title>
                <![CDATA[This is a text]]>
            </title>
            <link>https://davew.leaflet.pub/3mrsmwug7j22f</link>
            <guid isPermaLink="false">https://davew.leaflet.pub/3mrsmwug7j22f</guid>
            <pubDate>Wed, 29 Jul 2026 19:11:39 GMT</pubDate>
            <description>
                <![CDATA[No sage advice here!]]>
            </description>
            <content:encoded>
                <![CDATA[<div class="postContent footnote-scope flex flex-col"><p style="font-size:1em"><span class="                                                 ">Bingo bongo bingo </span><span class="                            italic                     ">sheesh</span><span class="                                                 "> it rained a lot today.</span></p><p style="font-size:1em"><span class="                                                 ">I was looking for its outgoing RSS feed which Claude assured me is here.</span></p><p style="font-size:1em"><span class="                                                 "></span></p></div>]]>
            </content:encoded>
        </item>
    </channel>
</rss>

The description element

The item-level <description> element is where the text of a post goes.

One of <title> and <description> is required. The first two posts have neither. content:encoded is not part of RSS, so it doesn't qualify.

Also use of <![CDATA is mysterious and not necessary if you properly encode a few characters in your description. I've pasted the source of the XML encoding function we use in FeedLand and other software, at the end of this post.

The HTML in descriptions is Leaflet's internal markup, not portable HTML. This is the biggest issue. It would be better to just strip the markup, because no one but Leaflet knows what to do with it. But it would be nice to pass through simple styling -- bold, italic, links, bulleted or numbered lists.

The guid element

<guid isPermaLink="false">https://davew.leaflet.pub/3mruzs43bys26</guid>

The contents of the guid appears to be a valid URL, so you can do this.

<guid>https://davew.leaflet.pub/3mruzs43bys26</guid>

It is a permalink, reader software should be encouraged to present it to the reader, and the default value of isPermaLink is true.

Seeing a guid that's not a permalink is pretty unusual.

The human-readable version of the XML

encodeXml function source

function encodeXml (s) { //7/15/14 by DW
	Changes
		12/14/15; 4:28:14 PM by DW
			Check for undefined, return empty string.
	if (s === undefined) {
		return ("");
		}
	else {
		var charMap = {
			'<': '&lt;',
			'>': '&gt;',
			'&': '&amp;',
			'"': '&'+'quot;'
			};
		s = s.toString();
		s = s.replace(/\u00A0/g, " ");
		var escaped = s.replace(/[<>&"]/g, function(ch) {
			return charMap [ch];
			});
		return escaped;
		}
	}