Discussion What happened to the GalNet rss feed?!?

[irongut]

For years there has been an rss feed of the GalNet news here: https://community.elitedangerous.com/en/galnet-rss

As a dev supporting the community I used that feed to include the news in my projects. I've spent the last month upgrading the news section in my Android app and was ready to release a shiny new version this weekend.

But today suddenly the feed is gone.

The released version of my app is now broken and the development I've done recently wasted.

I know other Android apps show the news so I they are probably broken too. I notice INARA doesn't have today's news articles so it is also affected.

Has the feed been moved? If not, why was it removed when people were using it and is there any plan to reinstate it?

 

[Erinir]

Thanks to your post, I've noticed this too. Last post I had was from Sunday's "Week in Review"
I run a small discord server but one of the features was Galnet via RSS and would like to see this fixed please

 

[Hironichu]

Hello!

I think it will come back as soon as they have finished the move to the new website.. this just append yesterday so it's certainly in the work.. (at least I hope so)
meanwhile, I found the JSON link for all the galnet news.. that's the only thing I rekon I could use to get Galnet news with my personal bot.. but it's not the best
There is the link (I got it from the dev tool on Galnet page btw) :
https://elitedangerous-website-backend-production.elitedangerous.com/api/galnet?_format=json

 

[Erinir]

Thanks Hironichu!

 

[Ambient.Impact]

Oh damn, that does seem pretty bad. I found this thread because all the old GalNet article links now just redirect to elitedangerous.com, which is probably related and really disappointing. I get that moving onto different software can be a big task, but it would be a real shame if the old article links didn't at least redirect to the new URLs. As some of us web developers like to remind others, URLs shouldn't break. I really hope Frontier fix the RSS feed and the old links.

 

[Cosmo]

Oh damn, that does seem pretty bad. I found this thread because all the old GalNet article links now just redirect to elitedangerous.com, which is probably related and really disappointing. I get that moving onto different software can be a big task, but it would be a real shame if the old article links didn't at least redirect to the new URLs. As some of us web developers like to remind others, URLs shouldn't break. I really hope Frontier fix the RSS feed and the old links.

Seconded. All th GalNet articles must be archived and accessible either on the ED website or in-game.

 

[irongut]

Hello!

I think it will come back as soon as they have finished the move to the new website.. this just append yesterday so it's certainly in the work.. (at least I hope so)
meanwhile, I found the JSON link for all the galnet news.. that's the only thing I rekon I could use to get Galnet news with my personal bot.. but it's not the best
There is the link (I got it from the dev tool on Galnet page btw) :
https://elitedangerous-website-backend-production.elitedangerous.com/api/galnet?_format=json

Thanks for that link. I can resurect my News section using that json feed.

Still annoyed that they removed the rss without warning though.

 

[Tkael]

Thanks for that link. I can resurect my News section using that json feed.

Still annoyed that they removed the rss without warning though.

Even more annoying for other languages, since this new url only offers Galnet in English.

 

[Pete S]

Even more annoying for other languages, since this new url only offers Galnet in English.

It's very frustrating, I've just added German and French translations back in CMDR but this is at my own cost and the quality of the translation will be variable due to it being automated :|

 

[irongut]

Even more annoying for other languages, since this new url only offers Galnet in English.

Funny you should say that, right now that json is providing titles in English and article bodies in German! (to me in UK) This is even affecting the official website lol.

03 MAR 3305
Week in Review

Hier die wichtigsten Nachrichten der Woche.

Der Geheimdienst der Föderation gab bekannt, dass die Nuklearwaffe namens Lucifer Device offenbar in den Besitz der obskuren Sekte Children of Tothos gelangt ist. Man geht davon aus, dass die Sekte sich Informationen eines Finanziers zunutze gemacht hat, um die Forschungsstation zu lokalisieren und die Waffe zu erbeuten

Fortunately I haven't released anything using the json yet but it doesn't give me confidence in the reliability of this feed.

 

[irongut]

It's very frustrating, I've just added German and French translations back in CMDR but this is at my own cost and the quality of the translation will be variable due to it being automated :|

If you don't mind me asking, which service are you using for automated translation and how well does it work? I've been looking into localising my app and I'm considering using Azure Cognitive Services.

 

[marwood82]

Funny you should say that, right now that json is providing titles in English and article bodies in German! (to me in UK) This is even affecting the official website lol.



Fortunately I haven't released anything using the json yet but it doesn't give me confidence in the reliability of this feed.

thank god for that, i thought it was just me. i live in germany but want the articles in English. i thought they'd implemented some sort of automatic location detection. but i couldnt see anyway of changing it.

interestingly if you remove the format tag from the url

https://elitedangerous-website-backend-production.elitedangerous.com/api/galnet

you also get it in Portuguese

its fine if they want to do this, but they need to put a tag in the json output to identify the language. that way anyone making tools can filter for the one they want.

 

[The Lawful]

Just for info, the feed seems to be localised now. If I enter this:

https://elitedangerous-website-backend-production.elitedangerous.com/api/galnet?_format=json

I get German text when using a German browser (the headers are all in English though). There are other supported languages, try adding any parameter (like &_dummy) to the above URL and it will give you Portuguese (?).

However it may be, I'm not exactly sure how the feed detects the language to serve. Tried rearranging the languages in Chrome to have the English locales first (ok tested against a multilanguage web app), but that didn't help here. German forever? [eek]

In any case, try setting the Accept-Language header to the locale of choice and see what happens. The backend is Drupal 8, if that helps.

O7,
[noob]

 

[Pete S]

If you don't mind me asking, which service are you using for automated translation and how well does it work? I've been looking into localising my app and I'm considering using Azure Cognitive Services.

I looked at Google, Amazon and Microsoft's solutions and eventually ended up using the Azure Cognitive Services. Nice and simple API with a free tier which will hopefully be sufficient to cover my needs (CMDR is free and supports English, French and German news feeds).

Though it looks like I may have put the work in for nothing if the backend has native language support, albeit in a broken state right now

 

[Pete S]

Just for info, the feed seems to be localised now. If I enter this:

https://elitedangerous-website-backend-production.elitedangerous.com/api/galnet?_format=json

I get German text when using a German browser (the headers are all in English though). There are other supported languages, try adding any parameter (like &_dummy) to the above URL and it will give you Portuguese (?).

However it may be, I'm not exactly sure how the feed detects the language to serve. Tried rearranging the languages in Chrome to have the English locales first (ok tested against a multilanguage web app), but that didn't help here. German forever? [eek]

In any case, try setting the Accept-Language header to the locale of choice and see what happens. The backend is Drupal 8, if that helps.

O7,
[noob]

Good suggestion but sadly looks to not be working. Tried a few alternative paths for the url in case they'd localised that way but nothing worthwhile. Interesting to note that it's only the 'new' entries showing up in German, if you go back to articles that were also on the old feed they're still in English

 

[The Lawful]

Good suggestion but sadly looks to not be working. Tried a few alternative paths for the url in case they'd localised that way but nothing worthwhile. Interesting to note that it's only the 'new' entries showing up in German, if you go back to articles that were also on the old feed they're still in English

Yes, tried the URL thing too and it didn't work. Nice find about the old English articles. I think those were simply imported and only the new ones are localized - as we know now, German and Portuguese translations are both featured at the same time

I think it's Drupal that is messed up somehow, found a dozen articles describing problems with multilanguage support, and well, given its track record of security issues, it would not have been exactly my premier choice possibly. They'll fix it sooner or later and then localisation should be automatic. Ingame, Galnet is English for me.

EDIT: Uh, what happened? Suddenly, English is back again! And Portuguese still works, too. German is gone atm.

O7,
[noob]

 

[irongut]

EDIT: Uh, what happened? Suddenly, English is back again! And Portuguese still works, too. German is gone atm.

Right now (00:10 GMT) I'm seeing Spanish since the 21st Feb, English for earlier articles. Just an hour ago everything was in English.

The json feed is not production quality imo but at least its making me laugh.

 

[Ambient.Impact]

Yes, tried the URL thing too and it didn't work. Nice find about the old English articles. I think those were simply imported and only the new ones are localized - as we know now, German and Portuguese translations are both featured at the same time

I think it's Drupal that is messed up somehow, found a dozen articles describing problems with multilanguage support, and well, given its track record of security issues, it would not have been exactly my premier choice possibly. They'll fix it sooner or later and then localisation should be automatic. Ingame, Galnet is English for me.

EDIT: Uh, what happened? Suddenly, English is back again! And Portuguese still works, too. German is gone atm.

O7,
[noob]

I've been building stuff in Drupal for about a decade now. I think what you're seeing is that they take security very seriously, which is exactly why they publish so many security updates. In statistics, this is called a selection bias: you're not seeing all the undiscovered security vulnerabilities other CMS software have because a lot of them don't have such an active community poring over the code. Plus, NASA.gov is a Drupal site, so it's secure enough for them apparently.

You're right that Drupal has historically had less than great localization support, and I've experienced that myself building a multilingual Drupal 7 site, but a lot has changed in the last few years, and Drupal 8, while not perfect, is significantly better.

 

[The Lawful]

Voilà! Today, it's Portuguese all over!

Spoiler

O7,
[noob]

 

[aymerix]

Hello here.

Same question. For information the galnet is no longer available in French at all. Moreover, when you click on a news on the launher (Fr) the link does not work (404).
Finally, our Galnet News website (news.galnet.fr) no longer works because we can no longer retrieve the news. This community website has taken a significant number of hours and contains a lot of archives (some of which are not available on the official Galnet). It is sad for this website that allows you to consult the entire Galnet in French and English.


Frontier: can you answer us please? We have had no feedback from you since last week.

THX