mirror of
https://github.com/georgemandis/bubo-rss.git
synced 2024-11-05 04:04:23 +00:00
58 lines
4.8 KiB
Markdown
58 lines
4.8 KiB
Markdown
# 🦉 Bubo Reader
|
|
|
|
Bubo is a somewhat irrationally minimalist <acronym title="Really Simple Syndication">RSS</acronym> feed reader you can deploy on Netlify in a few simple steps. It is named after this [silly robot owl](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MYSeCfo9-NI) from Clash of the Titans (1981).
|
|
|
|
I created this one weekend after nostalgically lamenting the [demise of Google Reader](https://killedbygoogle.com/) many years ago. Many RSS feed reader services have sprouted up since then but they all do more than I need. I wanted something that:
|
|
|
|
- Had an absurdly simple interface that relied almost entirely on default HTML element behaviors and functionality
|
|
- Could be themed with CSS or mildly extended using JavaScript, if I wanted (but I decided not to)
|
|
- Didn't worry about pulling in the feed content into the reader's interface. I'm happy to read most content on the site it originated from. I just wanted a single dashboard to see when new stuff is published and available.
|
|
- Didn't rely on a database to see what I've read or keep an archive of content over time.
|
|
|
|
## What does "irrationally minimalist" mean?
|
|
|
|
Many RSS readers—including the former Google Reader—would pull the contents of a post into your feed so you could read everything in one place. Although I completely understand why someone would want to do that, I decided even that introduced too much complexity for my liking.
|
|
|
|
My goal with Bubo was to be able to see a list of the most recent posts from websites I like in one place with links to read them if I want. That's it. If I want to read something, I'll click through and read it on the publisher's site. If I want to keep track of what I've clicked on and read I can reflect that using the `a:visited` pseudo selector in my CSS.
|
|
|
|
Bubo does not store posts in a database or keep track of what I've read. If an item is no longer available in the site's feed then it no longer appears in Bubo. If I miss something, that's just life. I can live with that.
|
|
|
|
## What about authentication?
|
|
|
|
There is no authenticaton required for Bubo. Netlify does offer Basic Authentication under their [Pro plan](https://www.netlify.com/pricing/), which would be an easy solution to implement. You could probably also utilize their [Identity](https://www.netlify.com/docs/identity/?_ga=2.147267447.1334380953.1567004741-1681444902.1549770801) feature to add some authentication. I don't subscribe to any private or sensitive feeds, so at the moment that isn't much of a priority for this project.
|
|
|
|
## Anatomy of Bubo Reader
|
|
|
|
- `src/index.html` - a [Nunjucks](https://mozilla.github.io/nunjucks/) template that lets you change how the feeds are displayed
|
|
- `output/style.css` - a CSS file to stylize your feed output
|
|
- `src/feeds.json` - a JSON file containing the URLs for various site's feeds separated into categories
|
|
- `src/index.js` - the script that loads the feeds and does the actual parsinga and rendering
|
|
|
|
## Adding Feeds
|
|
|
|
Find them in the site's source code and add them to the `feeds.json` file. This is the trickiest part of this whole setup I suppose.
|
|
|
|
The first version of this project used [Puppeteer](https://github.com/puppeteer/puppeteer) to extract the feeds from a site. This was actually quite cool, but would hang or fail periodicially. I was running this on its own server. It's on my list to look into converting this into a serverless version that could run using Netlify's Functions, but after using my own project for a month I realized it didn't make the thing feel much more usable to me. Builds were slow and there was a lot of work making sure things didn't timeout or use too much memory on the server. Simply parsing a list of known RSS feeds was much simpler and faster.
|
|
|
|
## Updating
|
|
|
|
The beauty of running Bubo on Netlify is you can [setup a Build Hook](https://www.netlify.com/docs/webhooks/#incoming-webhooks) to rebuild the site when you want to "refresh" the list of feeds. I'm using [IFTTT](https://ifttt.com) to trigger rebuilds once an hour, which is a perfectly sane rate to consume information at. You could do the same, or use another service like Zapier, EasyCron, setup a cronjob on your server or even setup a cronjob to run locally on your machine and ping the hook as often as you wish.
|
|
|
|
## How to use
|
|
|
|
- Clone this repository
|
|
- Find RSS feeds and add them to `src/feeds.json`
|
|
- Go to Netlify and deploy site from GitHub.
|
|
- That's it!
|
|
|
|
You'll probably want it to update regularly though.
|
|
|
|
### Instructiosn for IFTTT
|
|
### Instructions for Zapier
|
|
### Instructions for EasyCron
|
|
### Instructions for cronjob (local or otherwise)
|
|
|
|
## Sponsor
|
|
|
|
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 affiliates links to setup a $5 instance on [Linode](https://www.linode.com/?r=8729957ab02b50a695dcea12a5ca55570979d8b9) or [Digital Ocean](https://m.do.co/c/31f58d367777).
|
|
|