Improve RSS Block

[gziolo]

#7966 which contains the first iteration of RSS block had landed. There was agreement that we can tackle follow-up tasks separately to make the process smoother. This issue list all the feedback which still needs to be addressed:

1. Set min number of words. (PR: RSS block: excerpt minimum length #13502)

2. Let's change text from "Max length of the excerpt" to "Max number of words in excerpt".
   (PR: RSS block: excerpt length label #13501)

3. When there is an error we still display all controls (it's related to the aforementioned change to the way ServerSideRender component works:

4. Let's fix the error message. I don't think many will understand "WP HTTP Error: cURL ..." Can we just say, "Could not resolve host: xxxx"?

5. Let's review all translations used:

PHP file: https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/blob/master/packages/block-library/src/rss/index.php

[gziolo]

@Soean do you plan to work on any of the listed items? I can help with tweaking ServerSideRender component.

[Soean]

Yes, I'm gonna work them off.
What would be a good minimum? 1, 5, 10?

[gziolo]

What would be a good minimum? 1, 5, 10?

10 seems to be reasonable, let's discuss in PR.

[michelleweber]

Max length text looks good.

For the error, I think it's good to lose the first bit. Is there anything else we can add there? It's always good to try and give people a path to resolution. If I get this error, what do I do next?

[melchoyce]

Additionally, are there any other errors that can possibly appear?

[Soean]

Errors:

1. No RSS feed on the site:
   RSS Error: A feed could not be found at https://drupal.org/. A feed with an invalid mime type may fall victim to this error, or SimplePie was unable to auto-discover it.. Use force_feed() if you are certain this URL is a real feed.

2. No valid feed:
   RSS Error: This XML document is invalid, likely due to invalid characters. XML error: not well-formed (invalid token) at line 42, column 299 (Example: https://typo3.org/)

3. Non valid domain:
   RSS Error: WP HTTP Error: cURL error 6: Could not resolve host: xxx

4. Timeout:
   RSS Error: WP HTTP Error: cURL error 28: Operation timed out after 10069 milliseconds with 0 bytes received

5. If you work offline
   RSS Error: WP HTTP Error: cURL error 6: Could not resolve host: wordpress.org

6. Empty feed:
   An error has occurred, which probably means the feed is down. Try again later.

1. and 2. are messages from the library SimplePie which we use
3. - 5. are WordPress HTTP request errors
6. Can we change inside the block.

[melchoyce]

Thanks @Soean!

[Soean]

I updated my answer. Maybe there are more errors I haven't found yet.

I think we should remove the RSS Error: in front of the errors. The styled message should be clear enough and there is already a WP HTTP Error: in front of the HTTP request errors.

[gziolo]

@youknowriad found an issue which requests the changes to the ServerSideRender component which align with what is necessary for RSS block, see #7346.

[desrosj]

I came here after testing the 5.0RC1 and came here to suggest less technical error messages be displayed.

It would also be nice if you could just include an RSS block, and the associated feed title automatically displays. Having to add a heading block and an RSS block and keeping them together could be cumbersome.

[gziolo]

I came here after testing the 5.0RC1 and came here to suggest less technical error messages be displayed.

Yes, this is listed already. I found it really unfriendly for users from the first time I saw it 👍

[abrightclearweb]

I wasn't sure if this should be a separate issue, so I've added it here.

I'm looking for a way to increase the maximum number of posts shown in a RSS feed block. The use case is so that I can display the post titles for articles on other blogs I've written for on a page on my site.

At the moment I've written 8 articles for the WP Shout blog. They weren't all showing up on the front end, so I increased the number from 5 to 10 in the block settings.

But 10 is the most I can have, and I expect to exceed that in a couple of months. So after that time my older posts will presumably drop off the list.

Is this a feature request you can consider soon?

[danielcharrua]

Hey guys what about including a reverse option? like the shortcode offered by wordpress.com.

Do you see it possible?