Atom feeds render title as plain text
What does this MR do and why?
Addresses an functionality regression from a security fix, which technically enhanced the functionality, but not in a way Outlook liked. Closes Atom/RSS feed `<title>` renders HTML from Issua... (#608043).
References
Tests were written carefully with respect to https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab/-/work_items/594830+ (staff-only) and Atom feeds render (and sanitize) Markdown fields (!229957 - merged), to ensure no regression in security occurred.
Screenshots or screen recordings
I can't reproduce this in Thunderbird (customer ticket shows this regression in Outlook), so we'll show the change in the feed content only:
| What | Before | After |
|---|---|---|
| Feed XML | ![]() |
![]() |
| Thunderbird render | ![]() |
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The actual MR:
The Atom <title> element had type="html" sent on the Before side, which is presumably why Thunderbird is fine with it (it's parsing the Atom correctly), but it's unsurprising that Outlook would struggle.
How to set up and validate locally
- Set up an MR in a project on your GDK with a reference (like
#1) to a work item or other MR in its title. - Go to the merge requests feed for that project:

- Observe the
<title type="html">tag contains once-escaped HTML (<a href...). This is the valid way to represent HTML content in an Atom field, but Outlook doesn't like it. - Check this branch out.
- Refresh the feed.
- Observe the tag is now just
<title>, and no (escaped) HTML is contained within. Its textual content is the plain input.
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