oldest_article questions

[lucina]

Hi all.
I tried my best to find the answer to these questions, and I failed, so if anybody has access to documentation, she/he can add the answers there too.
1. Does oldest_article in RSS conversion accept non-integer values? Are they any good? (That is, are they used as fractions of a day, rather than rounded?)
2. The default recipes for daily newspapers use "2" in oldest_article. Should it not be 1? You would think that the last 1 day mean the last 24 hours, which nicely coincides with the typical update interval. Or is my thinking wrong?
3. Are times in RSS feeds respected? Also, those times have timezone information. Is the timezone take into account?

I have a suggestion. Some RSS feeds use UUIDs to prevent duplicate downloads. Could it be possible for Calibre to use them?

Thanks for the great program.

[DoctorOhh]

Moderator Notice
Moved to Recipes sub-forum.

[Starson17]

Originally Posted by lucina

1. Does oldest_article in RSS conversion accept non-integer values? Are they any good? (That is, are they used as fractions of a day, rather than rounded?)

I'm not sure, but the recipe schedule download time will interact with the oldest_article to produce partial days.

I don't know the answers to the rest. You can run tests to answer them, or look at the code, but I wouldn't bother. The variation in timing of different feed suppliers is so great that you can't accurately predict what will/won't be picked up. Just add a day or two and make sure you pick it up.

I have a suggestion. Some RSS feeds use UUIDs to prevent duplicate downloads. Could it be possible for Calibre to use them?

There is code in the code sticky to do this and there are some threads discussing alternative methods.. I wrote similar code and didn't like it much. It would occasionally fail, and you had to download and read every single issue to see all articles. I preferred to just read the latest issue and skip any old articles by title.