Invalid Document error

To troubleshoot an INVALID_DOCUMENT error, please download and use the News Preview tool: https://developer.apple.com/news-preview/. Once you have the actual detailed error(s) from that tool, we can try to help you further.

Thanks.

I’m having the same issue, from the preview I get the error:

Error: Unable to determine mime type of URL [bundle://Krastev-Snatch.jpg]
document -> metadata -> thumbnailURL

You need to manually grab that image from your site and add it to the bundle before previewing in News Preview.

Thanks – just did that and now am getting the following errors:

Error: Invalid URL: /4-badass-powerlifters-instagram
document -> components -> [4]

Error: Invalid URL: /tag/sam-briggs
document -> components -> [7]

Warning: Anchor with targetComponentIdentifier [TextComponent-4] is out of range. Range has been removed.
document

The site is barbend.com, so you can see that the two urls do exist/work:
https://barbend.comtag/sam-briggs
https://barbend.com/4-badass-powerlifters-instagram/

This is a known issue, to be resolved in a future plugin version: https://github.com/alleyinteractive/apple-news/issues/148

Hi Bradford,

The error being reported by the console is:

Error: Unable to determine mime type of URL [bundle://unnamed-1-1-e1461580910756.jpg]
document -> metadata -> thumbnailURL

Error: “text” was “\”\”” should be not (null or an empty string)
document -> components -> [6] -> text

Error: no components defined for role=body
document -> components -> [6]

However, the first of these regarding mimetype (which I think is the same as reported by Riley) also comes up for one of the articles that has already successfully published. The text and body errors seem odd, as those elements are in the json I’m submitting, e.g.:

{"role":"body","text":"The Tibor Reich exhibition in particular is worth the visit. On until August 2016, the exhibition is a retrospective of Reich Ltd\u2019s brightly coloured post-war industrial design. The second exhibition room is a riot of colour, with overlapping fabrics hung from the ceiling and so many patterns and colours vying for your attention. The range of the output is fascinating, not just in terms of the different styles employed but also in their application. The designs were applied to fabrics, both printed and woven, blankets, tufted and woven rugs, as well ceramics, including interior tiles, pots and tea sets.\n\nThe fabrics are heavily pattern-based, encompassing a vast range of design styles, from detailed florals to bold geometrics, explored at varying scales across the fabrics. Some of the ceramics on display also employ pattern repeats but many of them use a markedly different aesthetic, featuring his figurative illustrations of characterful people. The first exhibition room displays lots of these illustrative drawings alongside paper-based designs and architectural designs for his own house.","format":"markdown","textStyle":"default-body","layout":"body-layout","identifier":"component-572c4a7b21953"}

I’m having limited success using the plugin – it seems to be hit and miss whether I can successfully publish to Apple news.

My main problem is that I cannot use the Apple News Preview app on OSX. The documentation is scant at best. I have looked at all the posts/tips here and elsewhere but News preview will not load the article.json files and no logs are created in the App console.

I will be contacting Apple support on this but thought I’d post here as well.

Are you renaming the JSON file to ‘article.json’ and downloading the bundled images into a folder?

Hi Bradford,
Yes I’m renaming and downloading images to the folder. Dragging the article.json file to the News Preview window always yields the same message “can’t open the file etc” ‘check the console log for errors’. The console window is empty. According to my version of the app it’s still in beta.

Apple support has asked for details about the News Preview problem.

Interestingly, even the sample files that Apple supplies don’t open in News Preview.

Hi Bradford, further to my earlier comment, the issue only seems to be affecting a small number of posts; new posts are publishing, as are some older posts that hadn’t already been published. I can’t work out what makes these two or three posts less acceptable than the others; they only contain text and images, whereas other articles that have been published also contain embedded videos. It’s not as big an issue as I first thought, as it does only seem to be affecting a tiny proportion of our articles and new articles are publishing fine so far.

Below is a larger chunk of a problematic article.json file if it’s useful in any way:

{"version":"1.1","identifier":"post-27018","language":"en","title":"Whitworth textiles exhibitions review","documentStyle":{"backgroundColor":"#FFFFFF"},"layout":{"columns":7,"width":1024,"margin":100,"gutter":20},"components":[{"role":"title","text":"Whitworth textiles exhibitions review","textStyle":"default-title"},{"role":"container","layout":"headerContainerLayout","style":{"fill":{"type":"image","URL":"bundle:\/\/unnamed-1-1-e1461580910756.jpg","fillMode":"cover"}},"behavior":{"type":"background_parallax"}},{"role":"byline","text":"by Cari Morton | May 2, 2016 | 9:00 AM","textStyle":"default-byline","layout":"byline-layout"},{"role":"body","text":"Textiles exhibitions are not that common in our national museums and galleries, especially textile design exhibitions, so it\u2019s exciting that the [Whitworth Art Gallery](http:\/\/www.whitworth.manchester.ac.uk\/) in Manchester is currently host three textiles and surface pattern exhibitions concurrently.","format":"markdown","textStyle":"dropcapBodyStyle","layout":"body-layout"},{"role":"photo","URL":"bundle:\/\/unnamed-2-494x317.jpg","layout":"anchor-layout-right","anchor":{"targetComponentIdentifier":"component-572c4a7b21953","targetAnchorPosition":"center","rangeStart":0,"rangeLength":1},"animation":{"type":"fade_in","userControllable":true,"initialAlpha":0}},{"role":"body","text":"The Tibor Reich exhibition in particular is worth the visit. On until August 2016, the exhibition is a retrospective of Reich Ltd\u2019s brightly coloured post-war industrial design. The second exhibition room is a riot of colour, with overlapping fabrics hung from the ceiling and so many patterns and colours vying for your attention. The range of the output is fascinating, not just in terms of the different styles employed but also in their application. The designs were applied to fabrics, both printed and woven, blankets, tufted and woven rugs, as well ceramics, including interior tiles, pots and tea sets.\n\nThe fabrics are heavily pattern-based, encompassing a vast range of design styles, from detailed florals to bold geometrics, explored at varying scales across the fabrics. Some of the ceramics on display also employ pattern repeats but many of them use a markedly different aesthetic, featuring his figurative illustrations of characterful people. The first exhibition room displays lots of these illustrative drawings alongside paper-based designs and architectural designs for his own house.","format":"markdown","textStyle":"default-body","layout":"body-layout","identifier":"component-572c4a7b21953"},{"role":"body","text":"","format":"markdown","textStyle":"default-body","layout":"body-layout","identifier":"component-572c4a7b24061"},{"role":"photo","URL":"bundle:\/\/unnamed-1-1-494x371.jpg","layout":"anchor-layout-right","anchor":{"targetComponentIdentifier":"component-572c4a7b24061","targetAnchorPosition":"center","rangeStart":0,"rangeLength":1},"animation":{"type":"fade_in","userControllable":true,"initialAlpha":0}},{"role":"photo","URL":"bundle:\/\/unnamed-2-1-494x354.jpg","layout":"anchor-layout-right","anchor":{"targetComponentIdentifier":"component-572c4a7b2676f","targetAnchorPosition":"center","rangeStart":0,"rangeLength":1},"animation":{"type":"fade_in","userControllable":true,"initialAlpha":0}}, (etc. etc. etc.

Excellent plugin by the way; it’s been very useful to us in getting our content out!

Can you please download the News Preview tool to troubleshoot? It will give you detailed errors about why your content is not valid Apple News format.

https://developer.apple.com/news-preview/

Thanks.

Hi Bradford,

I posted the results of that in an earlier comment; the reasons are, I’m sure, correct, but I’m not clear as to why it’s happening for just a small number of articles, and why these errors aren’t reported for the other published articles that contain the same structure. It’s possibly a validation glitch on Apple’s side; I’ve reported it to them, but they just replied with an unhelpful description of the error I sent them rather than an answer to the query. I’m not really concerned about it myself anymore as most other articles are publishing ok (even though they appear to contain the exact same structure and relative URLs etc. as the failed articles), but thought it might be useful to report that it seems to be a limited and intermittent issue, in case it’s happened to others.

The error was:

Error: Unable to determine mime type of URL [bundle://unnamed-1-1-e1461580910756.jpg]
document -> metadata -> thumbnailURL

Error: "text" was "\"\"" should be not (null or an empty string)
document -> components -> [6] -> text

Error: no components defined for role=body
document -> components -> [6]

Many thanks,
Paul

I see. Can you please post the JSON for this article in its entirety? The part you cut off with ‘etc etc etc’ is actually quite important.

Thanks.

Hi Bradford,

I realise I’m having similar issues.

Here is what the preview too console is saying :

Warning: Anchor with targetComponentIdentifier [TextComponent-3] is out of range. Range has been removed.
document

JSON File here : https://www.messynessychic.com/article.json

Live article here : https://www.messynessychic.com/2016/05/17/climb-inside-the-hotel-rooms-hanging-off-a-cliff/

Hope you can help troubleshoot ??
Best,
Alex

Yes, we will be looking into this issue though I cannot guarantee a timeframe for it.