Some feeds appear as invalid in Feedzy while they are valid

[vytisbulkevicius]

Description

These feeds show up as invalid if you try to save them in Feedzy import:
https://www.osha.gov/laws-regs/federalregisters.xml
https://www.usnews.com/rss/the-report

These feeds are valid from what I see, they can be checked on SimplePie as well:
https://simplepie.org/demo/?feed=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.usnews.com%2Frss%2Fthe-report
https://simplepie.org/demo/?feed=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.osha.gov%2Flaws-regs%2Ffederalregisters.xml

Step-by-step reproduction instructions

1. Try to create a new import and use the feeds I shared above.

Screenshots, screen recording, code snippet or Help Scout ticket

No response

Environment info

No response

Is the issue you are reporting a regression

No

[tio-trom]

I have reported it here https://wordpress.org/support/topic/this-source-has-invalid-urls/#post-17399998 about similar issues for me.

The following fail for me:

https://www.tromjaro.com/category/apps/feed
https://forum.tromjaro.com/c/releases.rss
https://privacyinternational.org/rss.xml
https://newsrss.bbc.co.uk/rss/newsonline_uk_edition/sci/tech/rss.xml
https://www.directory.trade-free.org/category/goods-services/feed
https://www.tiotrom.com/feed

[Soare-Robert-Daniel]

@vytisbulkevicius, this one is pretty weird. I spent some time debugging the plugin and found no issue.

The actual issue is the WordPress SimplePie lib. Not all websites are reachable to it. So, the error was given.

Problematic links:

• https://www.usnews.com/rss/the-report
• https://www.osha.gov/laws-regs/federalregisters.xml

To ensure we are not just unlucky, I checked with other plugins and got the same result: the WP lib can not fetch the data.

Since the plugin invalidates the whole process, working URLs like https://www.tiotrom.com/feed are also reported as invalid.

ℹ️ I suspect that those problematic links might have a filter blocking WordPress access. It might be a protection anti-bot.

---

One improvement we can make regarding this issue is to display better errors to highlight non-working links better.

[vytisbulkevicius]

Thank you for the investigation @Soare-Robert-Daniel.

I see other plugins don't have a more specific error message but it would make sense to modify the message.

In New Import:

From:

This source has invalid URLs. Please correct/remove the following:

To:

This source has invalid or unreachable by WordPress SimplePie URLs. Please correct/remove the following:

In block usage:

From:

Feed URL is invalid. Invalid feeds will NOT display items.

To:

Feed URL is invalid or unreachable by WordPress SimplePie and will NOT display items.

When creating a category:

From:

We found the following invalid URLs that we have removed from the list:

To:

We found the following invalid or unreachable by WordPress SimplePie URLs that we have removed from the list:

IMO, it's irritating when you try to save it and only get information that the feed is invalid while you know it's valid.