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esassaman
Level 1 (9 points)

Q: "Can’t read your feed." error for valid rss feed

I'm attempting to submit a custom created podcast to Apple via Podcasts Connect. I am getting a vague error "Can't read your feed." with nothing telling me what specifically is wrong.

 

The feed is working fine in iTunes and verifies completely clean at the W3 RSS validator: https://validator.w3.org/feed/check.cgi?url=http%3A%2F%2Fsassaman.com%2Frss%2Fcc e

 

I've manually added the feed to iTunes (version 12.3.2.35 on Windows 10) and it has been working great for some time now. Every sunday I add another episode to the feed and it downloads in iTunes, sync's to my iPhone, everything works great.

 

Response headers from the rss feed request look good, correct content type and encoding. Feed displays correctly in FireFox as well:

 

HTTP/1.1 200 OK

Cache-Control: private

Content-Type: application/rss+xml; charset=utf-8

Server: Microsoft-IIS/8.0

X-AspNetMvc-Version: 5.2

X-AspNet-Version: 4.0.30319

Date: Wed, 24 Feb 2016 02:13:22 GMT

Content-Length: 21997

 

So from every possible test I can think of the feed is valid, including extensively validating by Mark I Eyeball that all the tags are good. I'm stumped.

 

The one thing I'm wondering is whether iTunes is somehow analyzing the enclosures and does not like enclosures served from static links on Vimeo.com?? I wish there was some kind of error, I don't have a clue why it can't read my podcast.

Windows 10

Posted on Feb 23, 2016 6:36 PM

by Roger Wilmut1,Apple recommended
Roger Wilmut1 Roger Wilmut1
Level 9 (78,576 points)
iTunes
A:

The feed seems to be OK. You have no episode 'itunes:subtitle' or 'itunes:summary' tags so your episodes show no description, but this wouldn't prevent the Store from reading the feed. The episodes seem OK - the URL begins with https rather than http but though this used to be a problem it seems not to be now. If they were having trouble with the actual episode media files the error message would say that they were 'having difficulty downloading episodes from your feed'.

 

So I don't know what the problem is. Possibly your server for the feed is reacting badly to requests specifically from the iTunes Store - this has been known to happen though it's unusual - while being OK with the iTunes application and browsers. You could try asking Support for help, but basically they will only deal with problems at their end, not yours. Go to https://itunespartner.apple.com/en/podcasts/overview and click the 'Contact Us' link at the bottom of the page.

Posted on Feb 25, 2016 7:21 PM

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esassaman

Q: "Can’t read your feed." error for valid rss feed

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  • Helpful answers

  • by Roger Wilmut1,Apple recommended

    Roger Wilmut1 Roger Wilmut1 Feb 25, 2016 7:21 PM in response to esassaman
    Level 9 (78,576 points)
    iTunes
    Feb 25, 2016 7:21 PM in response to esassaman

    The feed seems to be OK. You have no episode 'itunes:subtitle' or 'itunes:summary' tags so your episodes show no description, but this wouldn't prevent the Store from reading the feed. The episodes seem OK - the URL begins with https rather than http but though this used to be a problem it seems not to be now. If they were having trouble with the actual episode media files the error message would say that they were 'having difficulty downloading episodes from your feed'.

     

    So I don't know what the problem is. Possibly your server for the feed is reacting badly to requests specifically from the iTunes Store - this has been known to happen though it's unusual - while being OK with the iTunes application and browsers. You could try asking Support for help, but basically they will only deal with problems at their end, not yours. Go to https://itunespartner.apple.com/en/podcasts/overview and click the 'Contact Us' link at the bottom of the page.

  • by esassaman,Apple recommended

    esassaman esassaman Feb 25, 2016 7:24 PM in response to Roger Wilmut1
    Level 1 (9 points)
    Feb 25, 2016 7:24 PM in response to Roger Wilmut1

    I have no https links in my feed and the feed itself is not using https.

     

    I found the problem, Apple is sending HEAD requests to my server and I was not handling HEAD requests, so your comment that the feed is reacting badly to requests was right on. I checked my server logs and noticed it was returning 404's for HEAD requests to my feed URL. Once I added support for HEAD my feed validated just fine! Thanks so much for your clues. As a side note for you ASP.NET developers out there, it was as simple as replacing my [HttpGet] decorator with [AcceptVerbs(HttpVerbs.Get | HttpVerbs.Head)] on the MVC action.