RSS Publish Date Wrong

[ASHAtemp]

I have a flow that monitors a job board and inserts a line on a spreadsheet with the date published, URL of posting, and a description/summary. The dates started coming in BEFORE I even setup the flow. For example the flow was started in November and I have a posts with a date from February.

I think what is happening is that the job site allows users to recyle postings so they are using a posting that was created in February for their latest posting (which is separate and different from the original post). How do I get my flow to indicate the correct date (if a post is made/updated today the date should be today)?

[oleshy]

Hi @ASHAtemp,

Could you please share the RSS feed URI? Then we could look at RSS feed response and investigate deeper.

Thanks

[ASHAtemp]

This is my third attempt to reply to this posting. I must be doing something wrong.

The RSS feed is:
http://www.speechpathology.com/slp-jobs/all/index.rss

[oleshy]

Hi @ASHAtemp,

Currently this RSS feed returns 15 items, where the minimum date is 5th of May 2016. I've verified that the trigger works correctly for this feed. Could you please provide your flow ID (you can get it from URI when you click on the flow) or connection ID (also you can get it from URI when you click to the connection), so that we could investigate our logs exactly for your case and find out the reason.

Thanks,

Alex

[ASHAtemp]

Is this the URI you are looking for?

Default-0a0685af-ce28-4b2d-9daf-12622c77878c/flows/d4145602-3637-4a06-a260-3f0864f411b0

[oleshy]

Yes, thank for providing those details!

Ok, lets consider the key points of the flow runs (all dates are in UTC):

1. The first trigger's run for the RSS feed was on 2016-11-23 16:49:53. The latest RSS feed item had 2016-11-22 21:42:36 publish date, so the trigger was skipping until new feed item was added with 2016-11-23 21:41:06 publish date. Then trigger fired 18 times with new feed items, publish date of which was more than 2016-11-23 21:41:06.
2. On 2016-12-01 16:41:29 the flow was modified herewith the trigger state was cleared.
3. The trigger fetched all the RSS feed items and stated that the latest item had 2016-01-27 23:18:33 publish date. After that the trigger was returning the feed items which had publish date greater than 2016-01-27 23:18:33.

Here we have two main points why you received items created in February:

1. When you are modifying the flow, the trigger state is being cleared.
2. On 2016-12-01 16:41:29 the RSS feed contained feed items, the latest of which had 2016-01-27 23:18:33 publish date.

[ASHAtemp]

I do not see an option to 'clear' anything through my edit flow GUI. If this is happening I do not know what to do to prevent it should I need to modify the flow in the future.

Are their any behaviors I can take to ensure this does not occur again?

[oleshy · Accepted solution]

Currently if you modify the trigger in any way then its state gets cleared. However even if the trigger state is cleared it should not return old items, only new. In your case you received old items only because the RSS feed returned items to the connector, the latest of which had 2016-01-27 23:18:33 publish date (this call was on 2016-12-01 16:41:29 when the flow was modified and trigger state was cleared). Therefore if the RSS feed contained proper publish dates of the items on 2016-12-01 16:41:29 you wouldn't receive those old items.