The Initium 端传媒 router fails to fetch full text article behind paywall

[mintyfrankie]

Routes

/theinitium/channel/:type?/:language?

Full routes

/theinitium/channel/latest/zh-hans

Related documentation

https://docs.rsshub.app/routes/new-media#duan-chuan-mei-zhuan-ti-lan-mu

What is expected?

With default ENV variable or personal variable like INITIUM_BEARER_TOKEN, the router should be able to fetch full-text article from the source.

What is actually happening?

Some articles failed to be fetched in full-text mode, showing for example :

Deployment information

Self-hosted

Deployment information (for self-hosted)

No response

Additional info

No relative logs found regarding this issue.

This is not a duplicated issue

• [X] I have searched existing issues to ensure this bug has not already been reported

[github-actions[bot]]

Searching for maintainers:

• /theinitium/channel/:type?/:language?: @prnake

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[prnake]

Maybe the initium changed some api, I’ll check this later

[mintyfrankie]

Thanks! Happy to help if you need some more information to trace down the issue.

[shyrz]

The same issue. Please help to check.

[prnake]

I think it's a known issue that The Initium disables access to the full text behind paywall via a fake (or real) search engine bot UA started from August, which means only paid accounts can read the full text. And I tested the full text accessing via configured password or token from a paid account works fine now.

[mintyfrankie]

Hi @prnake,

Just want to give a quick update on the issue; withe either INITIUM_BEARER_TOKEN or env variables on login and password it seems to work fine now; however the INITIUM_IAP_RECEIPT doesn't work anymore.

I sniffed the iOS application and found that it uses a standard Authorization header, with its value as token xxxxx rather than Bearer xxxx. Maybe it can be interesting to update the script, as from my testings this authorization method can keep alive much longer than bearer token.

I'd be happy to contribute and raise a PR if you want to, or you can patch a quick fix right away.

[mintyfrankie]

Also:

I think it's a known issue that The Initium disables access to the full text behind paywall via a fake (or real) search engine bot UA started from August, which means only paid accounts can read the full text. And I tested the full text accessing via configured password or token from a paid account works fine now.

Perhaps then we don't need to fake a search bot anymore, as it cannot bypass the paywall. Can be interesting to do a cleanup on the script to streamline the logic.

[prnake]

Hi @prnake,

Just want to give a quick update on the issue; withe either INITIUM_BEARER_TOKEN or env variables on login and password it seems to work fine now; however the INITIUM_IAP_RECEIPT doesn't work anymore.

I sniffed the iOS application and found that it uses a standard Authorization header, with its value as token xxxxx rather than Bearer xxxx. Maybe it can be interesting to update the script, as from my testings this authorization method can keep alive much longer than bearer token.

I'd be happy to contribute and raise a PR if you want to, or you can patch a quick fix right away.

It’s great if you would like to PR for the IOS login method. And although the current fake UA is not working, it does not cause side effects, so I think it’s not necessary to replace it.