Roku Direct Publisher

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PJSWeb
Visitor

Having an issue with XML feed

Hello.

I am new to Roku development, but not necessarily programming. I wrote a php file that outputs everything correctly, but I am guessing it doesn't accept php files? Idk. So, I took the output of the php file and had it write an xml file. Here is the XML file it created.
http://roku.joystar.tv/feedd.xml

Is there any way someone can please guide me? I'm lost as to why it doesn't work. I thought I matched the format exactly.

Any help would be much appreciated!
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57 REPLIES 57

Re: Having an issue with XML feed

In your feed you have the following item:

 <item>
   <guid>http://joystar.tv/roku_media/media/play_media151.mp4</guid>
   <pubDate>Mon, 29 May 2017 19:44:23 GMT</pubDate>
   <media:title>I Love Lucy - Getting Ready</media:title>
   <media:description>I Love Lucy - Getting Ready</media:description>
   <media:category>Comedy</media:category>
   <media:keywords>I Love Lucy Season 4 Episode 11: Getting Ready</media:keywords>
   <media:thumbnail url="http://joystar.tv/roku_media/images/poster151.jpg" />
   <media:content url="http://joystar.tv/roku_media/media/play_media151.mp4" duration="74.74" bitrate="2500" language="en-us" />
 </item>

One little error here is causing the problem....you can't have a semicolon (:) in a keyword element

Once you remove the semicolon Roku Direct Publisher will read your feed.  Roku Direct Publisher will find additional errors with your file but these errors (file, thumbnail size) won't be an XML formatting issue. 

Hope this helps.
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PJSWeb
Visitor

Re: Having an issue with XML feed

Thanks for the reply!

Ok, so what I did was, added an array of not allowed characters, and then have the PHP strip (str_replace) the array before adding to the XML content.
$notAllowed = array("&" , ";" , ":");

Is there any others I should add to the list? And is there a problem with having the actual PHP file as my feed url or does it need to be the xml file?

Btw- I really appreciate your help!
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Re: Having an issue with XML feed

The feed url has to be an XML file.  

Your XML file still has errors (video files, thumbnails, descriptions, etc) but at least now the file can be read by Roku.
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PJSWeb
Visitor

Re: Having an issue with XML feed

Is there any way you can guide me on what my errors are and how to fix them? Even if I can pay you for the help, I'd really appreciate this. I've been working on this for a few days now and still no luck.

Thank you so much for the help thus far!
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PJSWeb
Visitor

Re: Having an issue with XML feed

Actually, I made a file to make the .json. I'm hoping it is accepted. The .json file can be seen at:
http://roku.joystar.tv/jstv_feed.json

Anything stand out? I'm so lost obviously.
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Baradanikto
Roku Guru

Re: Having an issue with XML feed

PJSWeb,

Please see MRSS Feed Update Utility and MRSS to JSON Converter.  This may help you.
FREE Windows desktop software for converting Direct Publisher channels to SceneGraph (SDK), for creating BIF (Trick Play) files, Roku (MRSS, JSON) feed files, and FireTV feed files @ GitHub/rrirower.
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Re: Having an issue with XML feed

"PJSWeb" wrote:
Actually, I made a file to make the .json. I'm hoping it is accepted. The .json file can be seen at:
http://roku.joystar.tv/jstv_feed.json

Anything stand out? I'm so lost obviously.

I am currently getting an "Unable to download from feedUrl." error which means your Roku is not able to download the file from your server.  I had this problem when I start and I don't remember what I needed to fix on the host end but it will come to me (or someone else).  It was an easy fix.  I will download your .json file later and look for errors on my end.
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Re: Having an issue with XML feed

"PJSWeb" wrote:
Is there any way you can guide me on what my errors are and how to fix them? Even if I can pay you for the help, I'd really appreciate this. I've been working on this for a few days now and still no luck.

Thank you so much for the help thus far!

By the way, I am not interested in money.
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PJSWeb
Visitor

Re: Having an issue with XML feed

Thank you so much!! If you see anything in my json file that may stand out, I'd really really appreciate it! But, I'm thankful already for the help.

Also - thanks to the poster for the documentation. I have read so much documentation, including those links - but I am obviously still missing something.
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