Aggregator: Corrupted title based on item description with HTML [#19573]

It's problem of aggregator.module in Drupal 4.5.x and 4.6 also. I have detected this problem when "aggregate" posts from LiveJournal.com which have blank titles and html in description at the same time.

In aggregator.module in aggregator_parse_feed() at line 501 (Drupal 4.5.2) there is such code:

    if ($item['TITLE']) {
      $title = $item['TITLE'];
    }
    else {
      $title = preg_replace('/^(.*)[^\w;&].*?$/', "\\1", truncate_utf8($item['DESCRIPTION'], 40));
    }

I suppose that it is incorrect preg_replace call as since:
1) it doesn't cut html tags
2) it may incorrectly work with national chars (i.e. \w): maybe ereg_replace is better solution?

For correct processing I changed this code to such:

    if ($item['TITLE']) {
      $title = $item['TITLE'];
    }
    else {
//      $title = preg_replace('/^(.*)[^\w;&].*?$/', "\\1", truncate_utf8($item['DESCRIPTION'], 40));
        $title = ereg_replace('<.*?(>|$)', '', truncate_utf8($item['DESCRIPTION'], 40));
        $title = ereg_replace('/^(.*?)[^[:alnum:];&].*?$/', "\\1", $title) . "...";
    }

Comments

Comment #1

morbus iff

they/them

commented 31 March 2005 at 22:05

Title:

Aggregator module: incorrect process html in description when title is blank

» Aggregator: Corrupted title based on item description with HTML

Wouldn't you want to remove the HTML from the description FIRST, and then get the first 40 characters from the remainder? The proposed code could still return no title, especially if the first 40 characters of the description are something like "[a href="http://www.disobey.com/"][strong]an example of an empty title based on a 40 character trunc before HTML removal[/strong][/a]". As for the i18n stuff, I know nothing about it, so someone else will have to address the change to ereg instead of preg.

Comment #2

(not verified) commented 4 April 2005 at 02:58

I're right. So insted:

        $title = ereg_replace('<.*?(>|$)', '', truncate_utf8($item['DESCRIPTION'], 40));
        $title = ereg_replace('/^(.*?)[^[:alnum:];&].*?$/', "\\1", $title) . "...";

put code:

        $title = ereg_replace('<.*

', ' ', $item['DESCRIPTION']);
$title = ereg_replace('/^(.*?)[^[:alnum:];&].*?$/', "\\1", truncate_utf8($title, 40)) . "...";
?>

Comment #3

(not verified) commented 4 April 2005 at 03:02

Oops.

        $title = ereg_replace('<.*?\>', ' ', $item['DESCRIPTION']);
        $title = ereg_replace('/^(.*?)[^[:alnum:];&].*?$/', "\\1", truncate_utf8($title, 40)) . "...";