The ICHC app feed was broken today. Whenever that happens, I always get about a dozen emails asking if there’s something wrong with the application. No, it isn’t the application; it’s the feed.
This time it wasn’t a problem with the server. Something in the first page of icanhascheezburger.com confused my script and caused it to exit. I added some additional error checking so it should work now. This is always a danger when you’re using a scraped feed, as I’m doing in the app. I’ve made it more robust than the original script, but it’s still always one step away from breaking if the slightest thing on the page changes.
The real fix will come in 2.1 when I start using the new Cheezburger featured content retrieval API, which will return exactly what appears on the site and lets you retrieve multiple pages of items. However, not all content is currently available via that API, although they’re working on bringing it up to date.
I submitted version 2.0 exactly one week ago today, and one day later I received the dreaded email:
We are currently reviewing an app that you submitted for inclusion on the App Store, and want to let you know that the review process will require additional time. We apologize for the delay and will provide you with an update on the status of your app as soon as possible.
I still haven’t heard anything further from Apple.