[HN Gopher] Combine multiple RSS feeds into a single feed, as a ...
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       Combine multiple RSS feeds into a single feed, as a service
        
       Author : 8organicbits
       Score  : 35 points
       Date   : 2024-06-30 18:58 UTC (4 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (github.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (github.com)
        
       | g15jv2dp wrote:
       | I cannot see any use I'd have for that. All the RSS readers I've
       | used in my life have supported reading from multiple feeds. Could
       | someone enlighten me?
        
         | bertman wrote:
         | I guess this moves complexity away from the client and enables
         | a dead simple setup (maybe for non-technical friends and
         | family?) with just a single big feed, like they already know
         | from TikTok and the likes.
        
         | batch12 wrote:
         | Maybe this could be used to offer aggregated feeds as a
         | service. It could be further refined to filter content based on
         | criteria either provided by the user or predefined by the
         | service. An example could be something like an infosec feed
         | with curated sources and maybe an optional refinement for
         | content related to vulnerabilities.
         | 
         | This could also allow users to develop/fork the aggregated
         | feeds and share them with a community.
        
           | rambambram wrote:
           | This in combination with the <source> element from an item is
           | a killer combo.
        
         | PeterStuer wrote:
         | If you use rss as a middleware protocol, it saves you in client
         | configuration. You deal with the updates and changes on the
         | sources, for your client app it is just one never changing
         | feed.
         | 
         | Tbh, I run specialized vertical services aggregating 100's of
         | sources (rss as well as other), and the combination towards a
         | single feed is trivial.
        
         | crazygringo wrote:
         | I am equally baffled.
         | 
         | It's a pet peeve of mine seeing software projects that describe
         | what they do, but without providing even a single use case. Or
         | even what motivated the developer.
         | 
         | Why does this thing exist? There is probably a reason and then
         | I could learn something.
        
         | harryvederci wrote:
         | I think koreader[0] has an RSS feature where you can fill in
         | some RSS feeds and it converts feed items to epubs. It's nice,
         | but I'm using a different reader on my laptop, so then syncing
         | (of which feeds you follow) becomes a thing to do.
         | 
         | Instead of following a bunch of them and having to sync them I
         | guess you could just follow the combined one and be done with
         | it. If you have multiple feed readers, each with their own way
         | to input feeds, I think something like rsscombine might be an
         | easy solution.
         | 
         | [0] https://koreader.rocks/
        
         | 8organicbits wrote:
         | Check out planets[1] as one use case. Projects like Debian,
         | Mozilla, Python, and many more aggregate feeds into a planet to
         | promote the blogs of members or other people who work in their
         | space.
         | 
         | Being able to subscribe to "Debian blogs" in one step is
         | helpful versus discovering each blogger individually.
         | 
         | There's a big list here [2], I think two use the linked code.
         | 
         | [1] https://indieweb.org/planet
         | 
         | [2] https://github.com/ArchiveTeam/urls-
         | sources/blob/master/4320...
        
         | insom wrote:
         | I saw this on HN and though "great I was just about to write
         | this but now I don't need to" - I have a legacy blog, a link
         | blog and another thing I update which all produce RSS and I
         | want to create one big feed of stuff I write, regardless of
         | which platform I chose to put it on. Seems like I can use this
         | for that.
        
       | Glench wrote:
       | I needed something like this once but I forget why. Now I would
       | probably just use val.town to build it instead of spinning up my
       | own go server.
        
       | pavel_lishin wrote:
       | Hah, I've recently had to solve the exact opposite problem -
       | fetching a bunch of content from a single source, and splitting
       | it into multiple feeds.
        
         | bansheehash wrote:
         | Amen! The Android Developers blog (https://android-
         | developers.googleblog.com, available as RSS at https://android-
         | developers.googleblog.com/atom.xml) comes to mind - It includes
         | updates on new compliance requirements to keep an app listed on
         | Google Play, which I care about, mixed with a whole lot of crap
         | I don't care about, like Google's latest shiny thing like
         | Jetpack Compose, fluff pieces and marketing speak.
         | 
         | How did you solve this problem?
        
           | pavel_lishin wrote:
           | Hand-written code :)
           | 
           | I don't split an existing RSS feed, but I scrape a website,
           | and store the posts in a database, with a column for the user
           | who posted it.
           | 
           | Then I generate an OPML file with URLs like
           | http://localhost:1234?user=... per user, and spin up a web
           | server that fetches only that user's feed given the query
           | parameter. Import the OPML into the news reader, and bingo
           | bango.
        
       | delduca wrote:
       | I miss Yahoo Pipes so much.
        
         | rcarmo wrote:
         | I use Node-RED for largely the same things these days,
         | including aggregating and summarizing feeds with gpt35-turbo.
        
           | onli wrote:
           | Hey, that's interesting to me. Could you share a bit more
           | about that? Do you replace the feeds with one summary item?
        
         | onli wrote:
         | I'm not claiming it's equivalent to Yahoo Pipes, but my
         | https://pipes.digital does have a combine block ;)
        
       | tonyoconnell wrote:
       | It will work well with RSS Proxy https://github.com/damoeb/rss-
       | proxy which turns any website into an RSS feed.
        
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       (page generated 2024-06-30 23:01 UTC)