[wp-xmlrpc] WP 2.2.1 breaks Ruby 1.8.2

[Joseph Scott]

On Jun 26, 2007, at 1:42 PM, Joe Cheng wrote:

>> Why can't we use the dateTime data type?  I've read over the XML-RPC
>> spec at http://www.xmlrpc.com/spec which I read to indicate that the
>> dateTime format is to follow the ISO 8601 format.
>
> Because several popular XML-RPC parsing libraries will choke on the  
> Z--
> exactly the problem that started this thread, IIRC. Windows Live  
> Writer
> originally formatted the dates with Z but we had to back away after
> one blog service after another choked on the dates. Anything  
> written in
> .NET (they all use Cook Computing's XMLRPC.NET library) and a bunch of
> servers written in PHP would throw errors when encountering the Z.
>
> Don't bother looking for justification in the XML-RPC spec. It's  
> useless.
> Note that it doesn't say to follow the ISO 8601 format. It just  
> happens
> That the name of the tag is "dateTime.iso8601"--that's it. Now, it's
> understandable that you would interpret that to mean "any ISO 8601
> conformant value is allowed", but it's also understandable that many
> XML-RPC library authors looked at the example and decided that the
> only format that is valid is yyyyMMddTHH:mm:ss, full stop.

I'm sorry, I thought you suggested another type because it didn't  
conform to the spec.  Still stinks that so many parsers would have  
problems with even the most basic of time zone data.


> (Incidentally, we should be glad we don't have to parse ISO 8601--it's
> an unbelievably complex standard that lets you express dates in a
> bewildering array of different formats (including, for example, year
> and number of days into the year). Far, far too general for a simple
> machine-to-machine protocol like XML-RPC.)

Amen.  At one point I downloaded a PDF of the spec (trying to  
remember the number pages, something like 40 plus).  Yikes.


>> That was my logic at any rate, I'm happy to hear thoughts from others
>> on this.
>
> Honestly, forget logic. XML-RPC and MetaWeblog are so vague/ambiguous,
> it's useless to argue about what the spec meant or intended. The only
> thing worth grabbing onto is what the de facto interpretation is.
> That's why I think it's important for us to document those de facto
> interpretations, and where there is none or where the status quo is
> Fundamentally flawed (as in time zone support), try and fix it.

Well, good to know I'm not the only one who finds some of this stuff  
fuzzy.

I totally agree with your conclusion, these de facto standards need  
to be spelled out and documented and then improved where possible.


--
Joseph Scott
http://joseph.randomnetworks.com/