From 9210bf463a8818595f7ca42486a787d4f1941d55 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Peter Stone Date: Wed, 21 Oct 2026 19:07:17 +0000 Subject: Fix stray promo headers, site-URL subscribing, and YouTube playback Three reported bugs. **"West Hawaii today articles get a bunch of stray Trending headers."** The publisher's widget platform injects promo blocks between the real paragraphs, inside the article's own container, so every structural signal tells Readability they belong. What survives is a heading labelling nothing, because the links under it are filled in by a script that never runs in the reader. Confirmed on 9 of the 12 articles in that feed, two each. Blocks marked `data-mrf-recirculation` are now removed -- the attribute says what the block is for in the widget platform's own words, which is a better signal than the word "Trending", since an article may legitimately discuss what is trending. Nothing longer than a label and a few headlines is ever removed. Also applied to already-cached articles, in place rather than by discarding them: the article was fine, only the litter has to go. **"Can't subscribe to heathercoxrichardson.substack.com."** Adding a feed handed whatever URL it was given straight to the XML parser, so a site's home page -- the only URL a reader can actually see and copy -- failed on the root element. That page advertises its feed the way sites have since 2002, in a in the head. It is now read, resolved against the page, and fetched. Only what the page declares: guessing /feed and /rss would add a burst of 404s to every failed add and eventually subscribe somebody to the wrong thing. **"YouTube play is misconfigured."** It was, and YouTube said so: the player dialog loaded the embed as its own top-level document, which answers with "Video player configuration error -- Error 153". An embed has to be embedded. It now sits in an iframe on a minimal host page. Measured in the app's own WebView: top-level, no requests for the video stream and the error on screen; framed, the stream loads and there is no error. **"Long click on YouTube placeholder should open the URL directly."** It does now. Worth recording why this is not simply the link's href: for an image inside a link, WebView's hit test reports the image's URL, so a long-press on the thumbnail arrives as the i.ytimg.com JPEG. The video id is resolved out of that. Verified on a device for all four: the Substack site URL adds "Letters from an American" and fetches 20 articles; a West Hawaii Today article extracts with no Trending headers and its body intact; the video plays; and a long-press reaches the YouTube app. Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_018AwnALZL6bD4VBtATDVv3B --- .../org/terst/feedreader/ui/YouTubeLinksTest.kt | 139 +++++++++++++++++++++ 1 file changed, 139 insertions(+) create mode 100644 app/src/test/java/org/terst/feedreader/ui/YouTubeLinksTest.kt (limited to 'app/src/test/java/org/terst/feedreader/ui') diff --git a/app/src/test/java/org/terst/feedreader/ui/YouTubeLinksTest.kt b/app/src/test/java/org/terst/feedreader/ui/YouTubeLinksTest.kt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..3afba16 --- /dev/null +++ b/app/src/test/java/org/terst/feedreader/ui/YouTubeLinksTest.kt @@ -0,0 +1,139 @@ +package org.terst.feedreader.ui + +import org.junit.Assert.assertEquals +import org.junit.Assert.assertFalse +import org.junit.Assert.assertNull +import org.junit.Assert.assertTrue +import org.junit.Test + +/** + * The YouTube placeholder: recognising one, and building a page its embed will actually play in. + * + * Both halves come from the same report: "YouTube play is misconfigured, long click on YouTube + * placeholder should open the URL directly." + */ +class YouTubeLinksTest { + + /** + * What a long-press on the reader's video placeholder actually reports. + * + * Not the link's href, which is what the first version of this assumed and got wrong on the + * device: the placeholder is ``, + * and for an image inside a link WebView's hit test reports SRC_IMAGE_ANCHOR_TYPE with the + * *image's* URL in `extra`, not the anchor's. Long-pressing the thumbnail produced the + * ordinary link menu showing `https://i.ytimg.com/vi/dQw4w9WgXcQ/hq720.jpg`. + * + * The thumbnail URL carries the video id, so it is resolved back to the video. + */ + @Test + fun `a long-press on the thumbnail resolves to the video, which is what WebView reports`() { + assertEquals( + "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ", + youTubeTargetForLongPress("https://i.ytimg.com/vi/dQw4w9WgXcQ/hq720.jpg") + ) + } + + @Test + fun `any thumbnail size resolves, since the reader has used more than one`() { + assertEquals( + "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ", + youTubeTargetForLongPress("https://i.ytimg.com/vi/dQw4w9WgXcQ/maxresdefault.jpg") + ) + assertEquals( + "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ", + youTubeTargetForLongPress("https://i9.ytimg.com/vi_webp/dQw4w9WgXcQ/hq720.webp") + ) + } + + @Test + fun `a watch link resolves to itself, for wherever one does come through`() { + assertEquals( + "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ", + youTubeTargetForLongPress("https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ") + ) + } + + @Test + fun `a short youtu-be link resolves to the video`() { + assertEquals( + "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ", + youTubeTargetForLongPress("https://youtu.be/dQw4w9WgXcQ") + ) + } + + @Test + fun `an ordinary article link is not a video`() { + assertNull(youTubeTargetForLongPress("https://www.nytimes.com/2026/10/20/us/politics/x.html")) + } + + @Test + fun `an ordinary article image is not a video`() { + assertNull(youTubeTargetForLongPress("https://www.westhawaiitoday.com/wp-content/uploads/reef.jpg")) + } + + @Test + fun `a lookalike host is not YouTube`() { + assertNull(youTubeTargetForLongPress("https://notyoutube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ")) + assertNull(youTubeTargetForLongPress("https://youtube.com.evil.example/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ")) + assertNull(youTubeTargetForLongPress("https://i.ytimg.com.evil.example/vi/dQw4w9WgXcQ/hq720.jpg")) + } + + @Test + fun `a YouTube link that is not one video stays on the ordinary menu`() { + assertNull(youTubeTargetForLongPress("https://www.youtube.com/@someone")) + assertNull(youTubeTargetForLongPress("https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL123")) + } + + @Test + fun `rubbish is not a video`() { + assertNull(youTubeTargetForLongPress("")) + assertNull(youTubeTargetForLongPress("not a url at all")) + } + + // --- the embed page ------------------------------------------------------------------ + + @Test + fun `the embed page puts the player in an iframe, which is the whole point`() { + val html = youTubeEmbedPageHtml("dQw4w9WgXcQ") + + assertTrue("loading the embed top-level is what YouTube rejects: $html", html.contains("""") + + assertFalse("markup from the id reached the page: $html", html.contains("