Views RSS display always outputs ‘submitted’ by and ‘authored on date’ inside the description tag

Views was moved into core in D8, so I'm moving the issue over to its issue queue.

@Liliplanet Yes this appears to get added in \Drupal\node\Plugin\views\row\Rss::render

    $node->link = $node->url('canonical', ['absolute' => TRUE]);
    $node->rss_namespaces = [];
    $node->rss_elements = [
      [
        'key' => 'pubDate',
        'value' => gmdate('r', $node->getCreatedTime()),
      ],
      [
        'key' => 'dc:creator',
        'value' => $node->getOwner()->getDisplayName(),
      ],
      [
        'key' => 'guid',
        'value' => $node->id() . ' at ' . $base_url,
        'attributes' => ['isPermaLink' => 'false'],
      ],
    ];

Might be needed to get valid feed XML, although it looks like they are optional.....

what do mean ‘get a valid feed xml?

Well a RSS feed needs to contain certain elements to adhere to the RSS specs, like described here http://www.rss-specifications.com/rss-specifications.htm
It may be that the elements you want to take out are required in some version of those specs. They aren't required in the 2.0 specs, but they may be in an older version, I don't know.

I think the easiest way to get the result you want is to override views-view-row-rss.html.twig in your theme and add an if inside for loop to test item.key != pubDate or item.key != dc:creator

  {% for item in item_elements -%}
<-- ADD AN IF HERE --->
    <{{ item.key }}{{ item.attributes -}}
    {% if item.value -%}
      >{{ item.value }}</{{ item.key }}>
    {% else -%}
      {{ ' />' }}
    {% endif %}
  {%- endfor %}

Does that work for you?

Moving this back to a support request because I don't think we want to change the default behaviour here.

@Liliplanet well it is coming from the templates but I'm guessing not the ones you are modifying. Using a D7 template should totally break everything, so if stuff still gets printed when you do that, that means you are not working on the right template.

You need to copy the provided template to the theme you are using, then the one in the theme will be used.

Oh and lots of cache clearing when you change stuff for it to be picked up.

@Liliplanet ahhh! Wait a minute, are you talking about the create date and author name INSIDE the description tag? Sorry totally missed that you might be referring to those!

I can reproduce that locally, and looked around a bit more in \Drupal\node\Plugin\views\row\Rss::render

and this is done by:

    $build_mode = $display_mode;

    $build = node_view($node, $build_mode);
    unset($build['#theme']);

But no idea why the RSS display mode would show those at the moment.

But looking at your description output (and mine locally), even if you take the author and submitted date out, that output is still crap. It contains wrappers for quick edit and all sorts of other escaped HTML tags. So using 'Show: content', looks like a bad idea to begin with.

I can get some nice clean output:
- Chose 'Show: Fields' (so not 'Force using fields', just plain fields output)
- Close the dialog without setting the required fields (just click the X in the top right corner)
- Add some fields (title, body, a url, node id)
- Go to Row style options (so click on the 'Settings' link behind 'Show: Fields'
- Fill out the required fields with the fields you've added
- Add more fields if you need them to will out the required settings

So setting it up like this:

So that ends up looking like this:

    <item>
  <title><a href="/en/no/way/dude" hreflang="en">Art my cle</a></title>
  <link>http://d8.mamp/en/no/way/dude</link>
  <description>&lt;p&gt;bod&lt;/p&gt;</description>
  <pubDate>2018-01-29T15:40:36+0100</pubDate>
    <dc:creator>admin</dc:creator>
    <guid isPermaLink="false">1</guid>
    </item>

But the fact that the default output is Content, and it outputs totally useless escaped HTML filled junk, is something that needs to be addressed.

@Liliplanet glad it works now!

Lets leave this as a bug. The fact that RSS displays default to showing content and then display lots of HTML garbage isn't right. But with a valid workaround it's not high on my fix list :)

Same problem here on Drupal 8.5.5, but you can get rid of the unwanted HTML tags:
Edit the field for the description in the view, then check "Strip HTML tags" under "Rewrite results". Save the view after that.

This issue doesn't seem to have anything to do with the twig templates, it seems it is being added somewhere in the rendering of the node in the Content format, where it renders the node and assigns it to $item->description in /core/modules/node/src/Plugin/views/row/Rss.php.

Line 129 renders the node:

   $build = node_view($node, $build_mode);

and Line 148 assigns it to the $item->description which gets rendered as the . tag in the XML output:

      $item->description = $build;

I haven't been able to find out where yet, though (stepping through render functions is tedious at best).

You can use the "entity_view_display_alter" hook.

e.g.:

use Drupal\Core\Entity\Display\EntityViewDisplayInterface;

function HOOK_entity_view_display_alter(EntityViewDisplayInterface $display, $context) {
  if($context['view_mode'] === 'rss') {
    $display->removeComponent('created');
  }
}

@Lendude your workaround posted in #17 doesn't seem to work anymore in 8.7.4. When I follow your example and use fields, I get validation errors when ingesting the feed into a third-party-application.

I was facing the same issue here.

I ended up creating a template hook: "template_preprocess_views_view_row_rss" to strip those undesired elements as due to the project set up I couldn't change the view to show fields instead of RSS teaser mode.

I used this technique to get rid of the tags: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/15627523/delete-html-elements-with-p...

function mytheme_preprocess_views_view_row_rss(&$variables) {
  $html = $variables['description'];

  $dom = new \DOMDocument;
  $dom->loadHTML($html);
  $xpath = new \DOMXpath($dom);
  $to_replace = [];
  $replace_with = [];

  // Created info.
  $found = $xpath->query('//*[contains(@class,"field--name-created")]');
  if (!empty($found[0])) {
    $to_replace[] = $found[0]->ownerDocument->saveXML($found[0]);
    $replace_with[] = '';
  }

  // Author info.
  $found = $xpath->query('//*[contains(@class,"field--name-uid")]');
  if (!empty($found[0])) {
    $to_replace[] = $found[0]->ownerDocument->saveXML($found[0]);
    $replace_with[] = '';
  }

  $html = str_replace($to_replace, $replace_with , $html);
  $variables['description'] = $html;
}

Hi

I tried it and get:

Warning: DOMDocument::loadHTML(): Tag section invalid in Entity, line: 22 в mytheme_preprocess_views_view_row_rss() (строка 13 из /home/u13436/domains/mydomen/web/themes/custom/mytheme/mytheme.theme) #0 /home/u13436/domains/mydomen/web/core/includes/bootstrap.inc(587): _drupal_error_handler_real(2, 'DOMDocument::lo...', '/home/u13436/do...', 13, Array) #1 [internal function]: _drupal_error_handler(2, 'DOMDocument::lo...', '/home/u13436/do...', 13, Array) #2 /home/u13436/domains/mydomen/web/themes/custom/mytheme/mytheme.theme(13): DOMDocument->loadHTML('<span property=...') #3 /home/u13436/domains/mydomen/web/core/lib/Drupal/Core/Theme/ThemeManager.php(287): mytheme_preprocess_views_view_row_rss(Array, 'views_view_row_...', Array) #4 /home/u13436/domains/mydomen/web/core/lib/Drupal/Core/Render/Renderer.php(437): Drupal\Core\Theme\ThemeManager->render('views_view_row_...', Array) #5 /home/u13436/domains/mydomen/web/core/lib/Drupal/Core/Render/Renderer.php(450): Drupal\Core\Render\Renderer->doRender(Array) #6 /home/u13436/domains/mydomen/web/core/lib/Drupal/Core/Render/Renderer.php(195): Drupal\Core\Render\Renderer->doRender(Array, false) #7 /home/u13436/domains/mydomen/web/core/lib/Drupal/Core/Template/TwigExtension.php(501): Drupal\Core\Render\Renderer->render(Array) #8 /home/u13436/domains/mydomen/web/sites/default/files/php/twig/5dc2e6cdd1459_views-view-rss.html.twig_UUnUjJ9j_KcYvCDefjA8wlfA_/c8WB115fheBBwNwBUPF-VqrqSRq-EZiQzEVSc4MepvI.php(85): Drupal\Core\Template\TwigExtension->escapeFilter(Object(Drupal\Core\Template\TwigEnvironment), Array, 'html', NULL, true) #9 /home/u13436/domains/mydomen/vendor/twig/twig/src/Template.php(455): __TwigTemplate_b41ef8aa305cef138fa389ffb238aa4b4b8378a4e17cc1354c1d9e0372cadd40->doDisplay(Array, Array) #10 /home/u13436/domains/mydomen/vendor/twig/twig/src/Template.php(422): Twig\Template->displayWithErrorHandling(Array, Array) #11 /home/u13436/domains/mydomen/vendor/twig/twig/src/Template.php(434): Twig\Template->display(Array) #12 /home/u13436/domains/mydomen/web/core/themes/engines/twig/twig.engine(64): Twig\Template->render(Array) #13 /home/u13436/domains/mydomen/web/core/lib/Drupal/Core/Theme/ThemeManager.php(384): twig_render_template('core/modules/vi...', Array) #14 /home/u13436/domains/mydomen/web/core/lib/Drupal/Core/Render/Renderer.php(437): Drupal\Core\Theme\ThemeManager->render('views_view_rss', Array) #15 /home/u13436/domains/mydomen/web/core/lib/Drupal/Core/Render/Renderer.php(450): Drupal\Core\Render\Renderer->doRender(Array) #16 /home/u13436/domains/mydomen/web/core/lib/Drupal/Core/Render/Renderer.php(195): Drupal\Core\Render\Renderer->doRender(Array, true) #17 /home/u13436/domains/mydomen/web/core/lib/Drupal/Core/Render/Renderer.php(139): Drupal\Core\Render\Renderer->render(Array, true) #18 /home/u13436/domains/mydomen/web/core/lib/Drupal/Core/Render/Renderer.php(582): Drupal\Core\Render\Renderer->Drupal\Core\Render\{closure}() #19 /home/u13436/domains/mydomen/web/core/lib/Drupal/Core/Render/Renderer.php(140): Drupal\Core\Render\Renderer->executeInRenderContext(Object(Drupal\Core\Render\RenderContext), Object(Closure)) #20 /home/u13436/domains/mydomen/web/core/modules/views/src/Plugin/views/display/Feed.php(63): Drupal\Core\Render\Renderer->renderRoot(Array) #21 /home/u13436/domains/mydomen/web/core/modules/views/src/Routing/ViewPageController.php(52): Drupal\views\Plugin\views\display\Feed::buildResponse('rss', 'feed_2', Array) #22 [internal function]: Drupal\views\Routing\ViewPageController->handle('rss', 'feed_2', Object(Drupal\Core\Routing\RouteMatch)) #23 /home/u13436/domains/mydomen/web/core/lib/Drupal/Core/EventSubscriber/EarlyRenderingControllerWrapperSubscriber.php(123): call_user_func_array(Array, Array) #24 /home/u13436/domains/mydomen/web/core/lib/Drupal/Core/Render/Renderer.php(582): Drupal\Core\EventSubscriber\EarlyRenderingControllerWrapperSubscriber->Drupal\Core\EventSubscriber\{closure}() #25 /home/u13436/domains/mydomen/web/core/lib/Drupal/Core/EventSubscriber/EarlyRenderingControllerWrapperSubscriber.php(124): Drupal\Core\Render\Renderer->executeInRenderContext(Object(Drupal\Core\Render\RenderContext), Object(Closure)) #26 /home/u13436/domains/mydomen/web/core/lib/Drupal/Core/EventSubscriber/EarlyRenderingControllerWrapperSubscriber.php(97): Drupal\Core\EventSubscriber\EarlyRenderingControllerWrapperSubscriber->wrapControllerExecutionInRenderContext(Array, Array) #27 /home/u13436/domains/mydomen/vendor/symfony/http-kernel/HttpKernel.php(151): Drupal\Core\EventSubscriber\EarlyRenderingControllerWrapperSubscriber->Drupal\Core\EventSubscriber\{closure}() #28 /home/u13436/domains/mydomen/vendor/symfony/http-kernel/HttpKernel.php(68): Symfony\Component\HttpKernel\HttpKernel->handleRaw(Object(Symfony\Component\HttpFoundation\Request), 1) #29 /home/u13436/domains/mydomen/web/core/lib/Drupal/Core/StackMiddleware/Session.php(57): Symfony\Component\HttpKernel\HttpKernel->handle(Object(Symfony\Component\HttpFoundation\Request), 1, true) #30 /home/u13436/domains/mydomen/web/core/lib/Drupal/Core/StackMiddleware/KernelPreHandle.php(47): Drupal\Core\StackMiddleware\Session->handle(Object(Symfony\Component\HttpFoundation\Request), 1, true) #31 /home/u13436/domains/mydomen/web/core/modules/page_cache/src/StackMiddleware/PageCache.php(191): Drupal\Core\StackMiddleware\KernelPreHandle->handle(Object(Symfony\Component\HttpFoundation\Request), 1, true) #32 /home/u13436/domains/mydomen/web/core/modules/page_cache/src/StackMiddleware/PageCache.php(128): Drupal\page_cache\StackMiddleware\PageCache->fetch(Object(Symfony\Component\HttpFoundation\Request), 1, true) #33 /home/u13436/domains/mydomen/web/core/modules/page_cache/src/StackMiddleware/PageCache.php(82): Drupal\page_cache\StackMiddleware\PageCache->lookup(Object(Symfony\Component\HttpFoundation\Request), 1, true) #34 /home/u13436/domains/mydomen/web/core/lib/Drupal/Core/StackMiddleware/ReverseProxyMiddleware.php(47): Drupal\page_cache\StackMiddleware\PageCache->handle(Object(Symfony\Component\HttpFoundation\Request), 1, true) #35 /home/u13436/domains/mydomen/web/core/lib/Drupal/Core/StackMiddleware/NegotiationMiddleware.php(52): Drupal\Core\StackMiddleware\ReverseProxyMiddleware->handle(Object(Symfony\Component\HttpFoundation\Request), 1, true) #36 /home/u13436/domains/mydomen/vendor/stack/builder/src/Stack/StackedHttpKernel.php(23): Drupal\Core\StackMiddleware\NegotiationMiddleware->handle(Object(Symfony\Component\HttpFoundation\Request), 1, true) #37 /home/u13436/domains/mydomen/web/core/lib/Drupal/Core/DrupalKernel.php(693): Stack\StackedHttpKernel->handle(Object(Symfony\Component\HttpFoundation\Request), 1, true) #38 /home/u13436/domains/mydomen/web/index.php(19): Drupal\Core\DrupalKernel->handle(Object(Symfony\Component\HttpFoundation\Request)) #39 {main}.

What's wrong?

Nothing seems wrong, you might just need to turn warnings off for that call as suggested here: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/6090667/php-domdocument-errors-warni...

...
$dom = new \DOMDocument;
libxml_use_internal_errors(true);
$dom->loadHTML($html);
libxml_clear_errors();
...

Thank you for errors-cleaning

But I still get ‘submitted by’ and ‘authored on date’ inside the description tag

<item>
  <title>Title</title>
  <link>mydomen</link>
  <description>&lt;span property="schema:name"&gt;Title&lt;/span&gt;

            &lt;div&gt;Subtitle&lt;/div&gt;
      &lt;span rel="schema:author"&gt;&lt;a title="Просмотр профиля пользователя." href="https://mydomen/user/1" lang="" about="https://mydomen/user/1" typeof="schema:Person" property="schema:name" datatype="" xml:lang=""&gt;Admin&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;
&lt;span property="schema:dateCreated" content="2019-11-07T15:00:38+00:00"&gt;18:00, 7 ноября 2019&lt;/span&gt;

            &lt;div&gt;  &lt;img src="https://mydomen/sites/default/files/styles/864x410/public/2019-11/text_0.jpg?h=9e875c58&amp;itok=xxZ_g_3l" width="864" height="410" typeof="foaf:Image" /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
      </description>
  <pubDate>Thu, 07 Nov 2019 15:00:38 +0000</pubDate>
    <dc:creator>Admin</dc:creator>
    <guid isPermaLink="false">142 at https://mydomen</guid>
    </item>

@cuman, that's because your markup doesn't contain the classes that the code was looking for. You can change the xpath selector to target: rel="schema:author" instead. Likewise for the date.

@fjgarlin, i did so:

function mytheme_preprocess_views_view_row_rss(&$variables) {
  $html = $variables['description'];

  $dom = new \DOMDocument;
  libxml_use_internal_errors(true);
  $dom->loadHTML($html);
  libxml_clear_errors();
  $xpath = new \DOMXpath($dom);
  $to_replace = [];
  $replace_with = [];

  // Created info.
  $found = $xpath->query('//*[contains(@property,"schema:dateCreated")]');
  if (!empty($found[0])) {
    $to_replace[] = $found[0]->ownerDocument->saveXML($found[0]);
    $replace_with[] = '';
  }

  // Author info.
  $found = $xpath->query('//*[contains(@rel,"schema:author")]');
  if (!empty($found[0])) {
    $to_replace[] = $found[0]->ownerDocument->saveXML($found[0]);
    $replace_with[] = '';
  }

  $html = str_replace($to_replace, $replace_with , $html);
  $variables['description'] = $html;
}

But no changes

Finaly I solved by views_rss and this patch: https://www.drupal.org/project/views_rss/issues/3070596

@cuman

Thanks for this! However, IMO, a patch to core is still the preferred solution as views_rss is still considered an experimental module and the current dev branch has been broken for a while and relies on some old patches to hold things together. I'm concerned about possible security issues with views_rss.

This issue will be fixed by #2353867: [META] Expose Title and other base fields in Manage Display and #1399990: Remove "Display author and date information" in Display Settings in favor of listing Author and Date in Manage Displays

A workaround is possible for 8.7 and 8.8 with https://www.drupal.org/project/manage_display.

Another workaround if you're using View display content instead of fields, is create twig's files for these node-fields, they're based on core/themes/stable/templates/field/field.html.twig

• field--node--created.html.twig
• field--node--title.html.twig
• field--node--uid.html.twig

You can remove all displayed content for RSS, with:

{% if element['#view_mode'] == 'rss' %}
  {% spaceless %}{% endspaceless %}
{% else %}
  {%
    set title_classes = [
    label_display == 'visually_hidden' ? 'visually-hidden',
  ]
  %}

  {% if label_hidden %}
    {% if multiple %}
      <div{{ attributes }}>
        {% for item in items %}
          <div{{ item.attributes }}>{{ item.content }}</div>
        {% endfor %}
      </div>
    {% else %}
      {% for item in items %}
        <div{{ attributes }}>{{ item.content }}</div>
      {% endfor %}
    {% endif %}
  {% else %}
    <div{{ attributes }}>
      <div{{ title_attributes.addClass(title_classes) }}>{{ label }}</div>
      {% if multiple %}
      <div>
        {% endif %}
        {% for item in items %}
          <div{{ item.attributes }}>{{ item.content }}</div>
        {% endfor %}
        {% if multiple %}
      </div>
      {% endif %}
    </div>
  {% endif %}
{% endif %}

Here is another workaround:

In your theme or module (example is from theme):

/**
 * Implements hook_preprocess_HOOK().
 */
function mytheme_preprocess_views_view_row_rss(&$variables) {
  $item = $variables['row'];
  if (isset($item->description) && is_array($item->description)) {
    // Re-render it.
    $item->description['#theme'] = 'node';
    unset($item->description["#children"]);
    unset($item->description["#markup"]);
    unset($item->description["#printed"]);
    $variables['description'] = (string) \Drupal::service('renderer')->render($item->description);
  }
}

Thanks @eiriksm, this worked for me. However, I had to remove the overriding of the #theme key, because it led to a fatal error in the node theme suggestion processing. I also changed the last line, so altogether it now looks like this:

/**
 * Implements hook_preprocess_HOOK().
 */
function mytheme_preprocess_views_view_row_rss(&$variables) {
  $item = $variables['row'];
  if (isset($item->description) && is_array($item->description)) {
    // Re-render it.
    unset($item->description["#children"]);
    unset($item->description["#markup"]);
    unset($item->description["#printed"]);
    $item->description = (string) \Drupal::service('renderer')->render($item->description);
  }
}

@mrshowerman

Still Its not working.

Same problem here.

Attached a proposed patch that permit to use the node template override, so we can use a template like node--rss.html.twig

Workaround can be done via theme

/**
 * Implements template_preprocess_views_view_rss().
 */
function template_preprocess_views_view_row_rss(&$variables) {
  foreach ($variables['item_elements'] as $key => $item) {
    if (str_contains($item['key'], 'dc:creator')) {
      unset($variables['item_elements'][$key]);
    }
    if (str_contains($item['key'], 'guid')) {
      $uuid = $item['value'];
    }
  }
}

Workaround #49 works like a charm but the following part is not useful, $uuid is not used after this:

 if (str_contains($item['key'], 'guid')) {
      $uuid = $item['value'];
    }

There seems to be quite a few options for fixing this in custom code including a somewhat simple preprocess hook. Do we need to do anything else here?

Wanted to bump 1 more time before closing.

I'm willing to take a shot at putting together a patch for this when I can.

There are options for working around it currently but most of them require parsing core's hardcoded output with DOMDocument(), which is not ideal (and not very Drupally). Giving template_preprocess_views_view_row_rss() access to the various components of the feed item without having to parse HTML would be a step in the right direction—I'll see where I can get with that.

Apologies for having been so slow to follow up on this, but I have some answers now. I'm convinced this is a real bug (for reasons explained here), but also that the current path forward is a contrib module.

First, why this happens: in the context of feeds, nodes are rendered by \Drupal\node\Plugin\views\row\Rss::render() which, around line 125, does:

unset($build['#theme']);

Once '#theme' is gone, no preprocessing is done on the node, including the core node module's own preprocessing at \Drupal\node\Hook\NodeThemeHooks::preprocessNode(). The core preprocessing includes some code that extracts and then unsets the relevant elements, preceded by this comment:

// Make created, uid and title fields available separately. Skip this custom
// preprocessing if the field display is configurable and skipping has been
// enabled.
// @todo https://www.drupal.org/project/drupal/issues/3015623
//   Eventually delete this code and matching template lines. Using
//   $variables['content'] is more flexible and consistent.

So because nodes displayed in feeds have no '#theme' element they're never preprocessed, and because they're never preprocessed the title, uid, and created elements are never extracted to be addressed separately in a template file; as a result the elements are still present when the description is built and they show up there.

A good fix for this in core is going to depend on https://www.drupal.org/project/drupal/issues/3015623 being sorted out, which does not appear to be likely to happen anytime soon. So I'm working on a module that I'll link to here when (if) it's available.