RSS to Newspaper Tooling.
I am a big fan of RSS feeds and readers - in fact my current setup involves using a self-hosted feed processing container freshrss which is then "read" by an iOS app, reeder.
However it was occurring to me that sometimes I'd like a simple, collected, PDF with articles I found most interesting, in a newspaper format. Even if I simply read this PDF on an ipad or sent it to a printer each day, I think I'd enjoy that.
Enter feedpress:
- Pull a few articles from curated RSS feeds
- Process them, cleaning up as much crap as possible
- Output a typst formatted file - and combined with layout/templating, use typst to create a PDF
Documentation: ./docs/index.html
- rust & cargo (https://rust-lang.org)
- typst (https://typst.app) - for compilation of article content into PDF
- [poppler] (https://poppler.freedesktop.org/) - for rendering of PDF to PNG previews.
- git (https://git-scm.com)
- node (for tailwind and if you want to edit the feedpress.dev site with 11ty)
- tailwindcss - uses node
- 11ty - uses node
- rust & cargo
# Build in your normal and comforable way, serve via cargo:
cargo run -- --serve- typst
# Set typst to watch the input files, so you can tinker with layouts:
typst watch templates/feedpress.typ output/feedpress.pdf --root ./- git
- tailwindcss (https://tailwindcss.com) (for UI elements)
npm install
npx tailwindcss -i assets/static/input.css -o assets/static/output.css --watch- poppler-utils (for calling pdftoppm to get 1st page images..)
brew install poppler(mac) or your preferred package management tool. See the poppler site for more information. In the dockerfile, this is installed on the final image, too.
# While in ./site
cp ../README.md ./index.md
rm ./index.html
npx @11ty/eleventy --output ./Sample docker-compose that should work and start the web-based UI:
version: "2.4"
services:
#feedpress
feedpress:
image: sullivant/feedpress:latest
restart: "no"
ports:
- 8081:8081
## if desired, volumes can be created to redirect the output directory, etc.
volumes:
- ./output:/output ## So we can access it easier, while developing
- ./log:/log ## Watching logs locally not via the browserEditions can be scheduled to press by using your host's scheduled task method. Cron, Windows scheduler, etc. The process to fire off a manual edition is all we need to call:
docker exec feedpress "/app/feedpress"Logs will append to the internal log file and the edition will be pressed the same as if you had fired it off from the web UI.
A future release may contain an internal scheduler.
Get the code:
git@github.com:sullivant/feedpress.git
Update some configuration. After checkout of this repository, note that there are a few "defaults" configured and a few example feeds. Without parameters, the application will run and serve a simple front end, available at http://localhost:8081/.
Configuration is located in data/config.toml
# global configurations
show_errors = false # true if you'd like to see feed collection errors
max_age = 3 # number of days old an article is skipped if it is older than
feed_limit = 2 # max number of articles to pull from a feed
# feed array
# example:
# [[feed]]
# url = "https://yourfeedurl/rss.xml"
# feed_limit = 10
# section = "Personal"
From the app directory, you can run this program. It will refer to the parent directory for configurations, etc.
# Will execute a feed pull and create input files suitable for typst.
cargo run --release
# Will serve a webpage located at localhost:8081/
cargo run -- --serve
# Will show options
cargo run -- --helpThe directories in this project are as follows:
./ - Root directory of this repository
./app - Contains the code to feedpress and the target binary
./assets - Contains local images used for logos, served webpage, etc.
./data - Contains configuration
./docs - Documentation
./input - Input that is feed into typst
./output - Output PDF files for viewing or delivery
./site - Contains the source for feedpress.dev
./templates - The actual typst configuration
./templates/bookshelf.typ - How each article looks on the page
./templates/feedpress.typ - The root typst "application"; imports the other .typ files
./templates/layout.typ - The overall layout of the page
- Bookmark ability - determine use case and decide implementation
- Include more detail on the frameworks used in the README
- Sorting options when viewing editions listing (sorts by date pressed)
- Smaller thumbnails when viewing editions listing?
- Flag/indication to show a save is necessary when altering configuration
- Logs in "about" section?
- Ability to size thumbs with a menu
- Unit tests
- Security. ("Security")
- Feed timeouts when pulling
- Documentation of all functions
- Proper error "match" handling, with Result<> etc.
- API endpoint to just "return the current edition" so it may be called via shortcuts, external apps, curl, etc.
- Delivery of editions to an email address
- Keywords extracted from each edition (maybe biblio or titles) and searchability by that not just name
- [/] Ability to schedule a feed pressing (Schedule via external cron for now..)
- Prettier cards for edition listing
- Cleanup of old editions and ability to remove them manually, like with feeds
- UI ability to add feeds or edit existing ones
- Dockerization of build process
- Releases and runnability on its own in a container
- Output should be datestamped in PDF name, not static
- On container startup or
cargo rundefault behavior should be to serve the static site - But still allow for parameterized CLI execution
- When in container mode, there should be a static page showing detail of configuration, a "run now" button, and later a scheduled task?
- Create static markdown driven site - that's just this readme at first?