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Code Project: Fresh RSS to WordPress Digest

February 8, 2023
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I actually briefly mentioned this project when I write about moving from TinyTinyRSS to FreshRSS. This has become a bit of an evolving and ongoing project however, so I’ve decided to catalogue it in it’s own page. This little script worked out much better than I expected, and I’ve modified it a bit over time, and have ideas to modify it going forward even more. Starting off, the code can be found here in this Github GIST.

I’ve left a bit of commented out code that i might use later for troubleshooting or adding additional features. The general gist of the code, it pulls the last 24 hours worth of news stories I have favorited from my FreshRSS install, then formats them into a digest format and posts it here, in this blog. They get sorted into their own category, you can find them here.

This is basically a thing I’ve seen others do that I’ve wanted to do for a while. It’s also partially just for my reference more than anything, it’s sort of a log of everything I have found interesting on a particular day more than anything. Others may or may not find it interest, which is why I also filter that category out of the home page feed.

Originally, it was just a list of URLs and titles. I realized that it might be useful to have SOME idea what the link was about before clicking it, so I have been playing with the summary as well. My first attempt was a bit dodgy because it actually posted the entire article as the summary. Currently, it just arbitrarily chops it off at a few hundred characters. I want to improve it even farther at some point by pushing it through some summarizing AI and getting an actual proper summary but I have not gotten there yet.

There re a few other things I want to add but I’m not sure they re easily possible. Firstly, I would love to be able to parse some sort of categories into the digest. So say, all the “Video Game” links are together and Music links are together. FreshRSS has categories but they don’t seem to show up in the feed anywhere.

This would also allow me to split these posts between this blog and my other blog, Lameazoid. I do share interesting video games news from FreshRSS, but I mostly don’t share Toy related articles, because it feels a little TOO FAR out there for what I want to post to this blog. If there were a way to have the categories, I could easily have the script split the feed by categories and post a digest to each blog.

I also wish there was a way to add my own notes and commentary occasionally. I don’t think it showed up in the feed either, but TinyTinyRSS had a notes feature. I am not sure if FreshRSS has that as well. I probably should try to at least suggest these features to the creators on GitHub, or maybe get really adventurous and create my own plug-ins for FreshRSS to accomplish these tasks.

Posted in: Programming Projects Tagged: Code Projects, FreshRSS, Python, RSS

FreshRSS and RSS Feed Posts

November 3, 2022

Keen observers (ha ha ha no one reads this), might have noticed that a few posts of links showed up in the feed.  These are basically, stories I read in my RSS reader that I found interesting, and wanted to share, or at least, keep track of.  The posts as of now are a little ugly, and I’ll probably clean up the formatting over time, but I wanted to go ahead and write a bit about the process.  I’ll have the Code on Github at some point.

As for the factors, firstly, this is something I’ve wanted to have on my blog for a while.  Like a long while.  I might even try to see if there are ways to better slit up the links by topic later.  A fair number of blogs I subscribe to have these sort of link digest posts, and I’ve always just liked the idea.  It’s also good for personal reference to when I may have read something.  It is limited as it only comes from y RSS Reader.

Speaking of my RSS Reader.  I’ve moved on from TinyTinyRSS, for a few reasons.  One, the interface is a little meh, honestly.  Maybe the newer version is better but it’s only available in Docker, and Docker is such a PItA to use.  Also, while looking for alternatives, it sounds like the folks who make TTRSS are kind of a bunch of gatekeeping jerk types, and I’d rather not support that.  I also find the need to keep the update daemon running with Screen to be a pain.  So I’ve moved over to FreshRSS, which I just run locally on a Raspberry Pi.  I may move it to a publicly accessibly machine at some point, but I am not entirely convinced that TT-RSS wasn’t the entry point for my previous server malware woes.

So, like TT-RSS, Fresh RSS has a way to get an RSS feed out of your Favorited posts.  In the past I’ve used tools like IFTTT to automate posting these links around, but I don’t use IFTTT anymore for reasons I’m not going into.  Fortunately, I’ve been working to become a pretty good Python coder for the last month or so.  So instead I wrote a script.  

It’s not even a particularly complicated script.  There are only two things it really needs to do, get new articles, and then post them to WordPress. Since the script runs locally, on the same Raspberry Pi even, it easily can reach and pull the RSS feed.  One nice thing I noticed with Fresh RSS, the feed included a time interval, so just getting new posts was super simple, because the interval is just “24” for “24 hours”.  The script eventually will run on a cronjob at the exact same time daily.  Anyway, after pulling the RSS, the entries are already in an easily usable Dictionary.  which gets fed into the construction of the WordPress Post.

def get_feed(feed_url):
    NewsFeed = feedparser.parse(feed_url)
    return NewsFeed

The posting part was pretty easy as well, WordPress has an API, and Python also has a library that can use that API.  It just needs some log in information and a post payload to send.  

def make_post(NewsFeed):
    wp = Client(f'https://{wp_url}/xmlrpc.php', wp_user, wp_pass)
    post = WordPressPost()
    post.title = f"{cur_date} - Link List"
    post.terms_names = {'category': ['Link List'], 'post_tag': ['links', 'FreshRSS']}
    post.content = f"<p>Blogging Intensifies Link List for {cur_date}</p>"
    for each in NewsFeed.entries:
        post.content += f'{each.published[5:-15].replace(" ", "-")} - <a href="{each.links[0].href}">{each.title}</a></p>'

The trickiest part was formatting the date a bit prettier.  I mentioned cleaning up the formatting a bit, I’m thinking maybe a simple invisible table, so the date and the links don’t wrap oddly like they do now.   i also added a check that if there are no new favorited posts, it will skip making a post.  Otherwise I’ll end up with empty posts on days I forget to check my feed reader

While writing the script, at first I was just outputting a text copy of the post to the console until satisfied.  Eventually, I pushed out a real post, then verified that things worked.  The next day, was just a straight test by opening the project, then running it again.  The third day, I copied the files and installed the lobraries needed, then posted from the Pi.  Phase 4 of this will be to set up Cron to run it automatically.  If that works then it will certainly, “just run” for the foreseeable future.

Posted in: Coding Tagged: Coding, Projects, Python, RSS

Tiny Tiny RSS, Possibly my Perfect RSS Solution

February 3, 2015 / Leave a Comment

rss_iconSo, I mentioned recently, I wanted to migrate off of my shared Hosting to a VPS on Digital Ocean.  One reason sited was more control over what I can do with the server.  It’s essentially just a cloud based Linux machine, I can do anything I would do on a locally hosted Ubuntu box with it.  I came across Tiny Tiny RSS recently, and it’s the perfect example of the kind of thing I wanted the VPS for.

While nowhere near the main reason, the final straw with my tolerance of Google’s increasing level of crap was the closing of Reader, a service I’d depended on pretty much since it’s inception.  I’d tried a few alternative solutions but nothing really did anything for me next tot he simplicity to Google Reader.

Eventually I just sort of lost the want for RSS feeds.  The whole web seems to be abandoning the idea 9probably because it’s not nearly as easy to plaster crap ads all over an RSS feed) so I just decided to let it go.

Recently I’ve been trying to find a good solution again.  I really hate not being able to keep up with infrequently updated blogs i find.  That’s like 90% of the reason i liked having Google Reader, so when that interesting niche blog I like that updates once ever 4 months updates, I can know.

I looked into some Firefox extensions but using them tends ot be clunky.  I’ve tried a few different apps on my phone but nothing is idea.  The biggest issue is a lack of sync across everything.

tinytinyrss

Tiny Tiny RSS is a self hosted RSS Reader.  You download it (with Git in this case), set up a database for it, and let it roll.  I’ve set it up on my little sandbox domain BloggingIntensifies.com and added feeds I was pulling with other services to it.

It’s web based, so I can get to it from anywhere.  Need number one.

It’s hosted by me, so I won’t have to worry about some “thinks they know best” company screwing me over again, need number two.

There is a built in API so it can be access via mobile with an app.  Need number 3.  BONUS!  There is even a compatible Windows Phone app.

The next step is to figure out what I did with my old list of Google Reader feeds and start loading it up.

Posted in: Linux & Open Source Tagged: news, Reader, RSS

Categories

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  • ►Feeds (347)
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    • Books (4)
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    • The Basement (6)
  • ►Micro Blog (55)
  • ►Opinion/Editorial/Life (18)
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    • Devices (Phones and Tablets) (9)
    • Linux & Open Source (6)
    • PC Hardware (6)
    • Synology NAS (5)
    • Windows (2)
  • ►Uncategorized (0)

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