Bubo Reader is a hyper-minimalist <acronymtitle="Really Simple Syndication">RSS</acronym> and <acronymtitle="JavaScript Object Notation">JSON</acronym> feed reader you can deploy on your own server, [Netlify](https://netlify.com) in a few steps or [Glitch](https://glitch.com) in even fewer steps! The goal of the project is to generate a webpage that shows a list of links from a collection of feeds organized by category and website. That's it.
- Clone or fork the repo and run `npm install` to install the dependencies.
- Update `feeds.json` to include categories and links to feeds you would like to see.
- Run `npm run build:bubo`
That's it! You should now have a static page with links to the latest content from your feeds in the `public` folder, ready to serve.
## Differences in Bubo 2.0
Version 2.0 has introduced some substantial changes for Bubo! While the static output remains endearingly spartan, the engine that builds it has changed a bit.
Hopefully all of these changes are in services of making this project more useful to others and encouraging outside contributions.
Changes of note:
- Bubo has been rewritten in [TypeScript](https://www.typescriptlang.org/). It's pretty slick! I anticipate the typing could be improved, but it's a start.
- You fill find an `.nvmrc` file in the root of this project. Learn more [about nvm](https://github.com/nvm-sh/nvm) if you're unfamiliar.
- The script will actually write your `index.html` file for you (Previously the build script simply ran `node src/index.js > output/index.html`). It makes a strong assumption that this file lives in the `public` folder.
- There is a somewhat sophisticated mechansim in-place for batching & throttling your requests, if needed.
-`conf/feeds.json` - a JSON file containing your feed URLS separated into categories.
-`config/template.html` - a [Nunjucks](https://mozilla.github.io/nunjucks/) template that lets you change how the feeds are displayed. This can be changed to anything else you like— see below.
-`public/style.css` - a CSS file to stylize your feed output.
-`public/index.html` - The HTML file that gets automatically generated when Bubo is run.
The engine:
-`src/index.ts` - The primary script you run when you want to build a new version of Bubo. It will automatically fetch the latest content from your feeds and build a new static file at `public/index.html`.
-`src/renderer.ts` — The renderer that loads Nunjucks, the template and understands how to process the incoming feed data. Prefer something else? This is the place to change it!
-`src/utilities.ts` — A variety of parsing and normalization utilities for Bubo, hidden away to try and keep things clean.
In the main `index.ts` file you will find two values that allow yout to batch and throttle your feed requests:
-`MAX_CONNECTIONS` dictates the maximium number of requests a batch can have going at once.
-`DELAY_MS` dictates the amount of de;ay time between each batch.
The default configuration is **no batching or throttling** beacuse `MAX_CONNECTIONS` is set to `Infinity`. If you wanted to change Bubo to only fetch one feed at a time every second you could set these values to:
```javascript
const MAX_CONNECTIONS = 1;
const DELAY_MS = 1000;
```
If you wanted to limit things to 10 simultaneous requests every 2.5 seconds you could set it like so:
```javascript
const MAX_CONNECTIONS = 10;
const DELAY_MS = 2500;
```
In practice, I've never _really_ run into an issue leaving `MAX_CONNECTIONS` set to `Infinity` but this feels like a sensible safeguard to design.
Just changed some feeds in `./config/feeds.json` file and you're set! If you'd like to modify the style or the template you can changed `./public/style.css` file or the `./config/template.html` file respectively.
To keep your feeds up to date you'll want to [setup a Build Hook](https://www.netlify.com/docs/webhooks/#incoming-webhooks) for your Netlify site and use another service to ping it every so often to trigger a rebuild. I'd suggest looking into:
If you already have a server running Linux and some command-line experience it might be simpler to setup a [cron job](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cron).
If you found this useful please consider sponsoring me or this project.
If you'd rather run this on your own server please consider using one of these affiliate links to setup a micro instance on [Linode](https://www.linode.com/?r=8729957ab02b50a695dcea12a5ca55570979d8b9), [Digital Ocean](https://m.do.co/c/31f58d367777) or [Vultr](https://www.vultr.com/?ref=8403978).
