Sure, I'm for keeping the specs simple. I just wanted to share a practical obstacle I encountered while implementing the specs, and it's up to you guys to decide if it's worth doing anything about it.
I did spend a few hours today implementing the unsubscribe functionality. And, yes, I know, it should theoretically take no more than 10 minutes, but my system is complex and the parts that handle subscribing are different from the parts that handle un-subscribing. The problem I faced was that when I get an update from the hub, it doesn't include the topic URL with it. I do include an identifier of the blog in the callback URL, but if the blog has been deleted from my system, then the only way to find the topic URL is to parse the feed and extract the "self" link. This works most of the time, except when the feed is malformed. In which case, there is not much I can do other than letting the subscription expire on it's own. This brings me to another suggestion: it would be super nice if the hub sends the hub_url and topic_url as headers in the POST so it's easier to tell where the update is coming from. Regards, Waleed On Tue, Feb 16, 2010 at 9:50 AM, Bob Wyman <[email protected]> wrote: > On Mon, Feb 15, 2010 at 6:57 PM, Waleed Abdulla <[email protected]> wrote: > > > What if, as a subscriber, when I receive a ping > > for a feed that I don't care about anymore, > > I simply reply with the word "unsubscribe" > > in the body to tell the hub to get me off the list? > While your proposal sounds pretty easy, it would make the PSHB > specification more complex while not really adding any more capability to > the system. My personal preference would be to keep the core specification > as simple as possible and only increase its complexity when doing so > actually delivers new capabilities. > > bob wyman > > On Mon, Feb 15, 2010 at 6:57 PM, Waleed Abdulla <[email protected]> wrote: > >> Hey everyone, >> While implementing PubSubHubbub and using it in production, I realized >> that there are several situations in which I need to un-subscribe from a >> feed. Per the specs, the right approach, is to send an unsubscribe request. >> While this works, there could be an easier way: What if, as a subscriber, >> when I receive a ping for a feed that I don't care about anymore, I simply >> reply with the word "unsubscribe" in the body to tell the hub to get me off >> the list? >> >> When I receive a ping, I have to check it out and decide what to do >> with it, and that's the perfect time to decide if I want to unsubscribe. By >> making it super easy to unsubscribe, I believe we'll have less pings that >> get ignored because the subscriber can't be bothered to send a proper >> unsubscribe request. Thoughts? >> >> Regards, >> Waleed >> >> >
