RSS-Bridge - a good complement to Fresh RSS

https://github.com/RSS-Bridge/rss-bridge

RSS-Bridge is a tool to generate feeds that are consumed by feed readers and feed aggregators.
Generates feeds from Twitter, Youtube, Wikipedia, Instagram, Pinterest and many more.

Want to leave feedly and co. But in Feedly I can follow twitter accounts.
I know https://twitrss.me/ but it is not sure how long that service will exist.

necrevistonnezr

https://forum.cloudron.io/post/3344
Easy to set up & run in a LAMP app

marcusquinn

Yesss to this!!

RSS Feeds from popular sites to track them with Tiny Tiny RSS etc. I neeeeed this in my hectic online life being calmed by Cloudron.

And probably the best README.md I've ever seen on GitHub!
(see the Rant heading at the bottom)

https://github.com/RSS-Bridge/rss-bridge#rant

Save us all from having to scroll & browse so many websites & platforms - reclaim RSS! :

Will probably try a LAMP App version if the packaged versions doesn't come soon, but I see an educational and time-recover factor value in this for all Sys Admins and online workers with a zillion tabs & webapps to track and wondering where the day went.

Examples

yusf

Thanks for this. I will use it.

marcusquinn

@necrevistonnezr OK, that was easy - to a point - thanks for the links

Repeating here for those as time-poor:

Create a LAMP App at rss-bridge.yourdomain.com`
https://github.com/RSS-Bridge/rss-bridge/wiki/Installation
Click last stable release
Download from the link at the bottom of the page.
Unzip
Connect to SFTP & upload the contents to /public
- I create a /tmp folder and put the original Cloudron created index.php and a copy of the downloaded .zip file in there too for reference.
Open the LAMP Terminal in Cloudron and enter
- chown -R www-data /app/data/public/cache
For htaccess password protection: (maybe there's a way to do this with LDAP?)
- htpasswd -c /app/data/public/.htpasswd yourusernamehere
Add this to .htaccess:
AuthUserFile /app/data/public/.htpasswd
AuthType Basic
AuthName "Please contact the site admin for details"
Require valid-user
Visit https://rss-bridge.yourdomain.com - tada!
App level user, password config, cache config etc:
- https://github.com/RSS-Bridge/rss-bridge/wiki/Custom-Configuration

Now, this is where I got stuck. What I can't seem to figure out though is how to get Twitter search feeds working. They seem to work on other public servers, so guessing it's a config issue.

Anyone have any luck and suggestions with "Twitter Bridge"?

Let me know any recommended updates to the steps above and I'll Edit.

marcusquinn

It seems that either way, with .htccess & .htpassword — or the app's config of a user/password through config.ini.php (instructions in https://github.com/RSS-Bridge/rss-bridge/wiki/Custom-Configuration) — that Cloudron thinks the app is "Not responding"

@girish feature, bug or my imagination?

girish

@marcusquinn I think because the app is password protected, the healthcheck route will now not return a 200 and will return 401/403. This is why Cloudron thinks it is not responding.

Can you try something like this - https://cloudron.io/documentation/apps/lamp/#health-check

marcusquinn

@girish Thanks! Opted for the .htaccess solution from the link so it survives updates without accidental overwriting. Restarting the app now shows as "Running" in the Cloudron Dashboard.

My Twitter Bridge issue remains though. Anyone else having any luck with this? I'm guessing it's using CURL on an open port so not a firewall issue but that's just a guess.

Would be super handy to get this running for social media monitoring key accounts and keywords since a lot of marketing nowadays is being a good quick responder to mentions and related chat.

marcusquinn

@girish seems I might have found the problem and it seems like it might be a Cloudron config issue?

https://github.com/RSS-Bridge/rss-bridge/issues/954

The full error I get:

Bridge returned error 0! (18480)
2020-08-06T02:25:12+00:00

Twitter @marcuswquinn was unable to receive or process the remote website's content!
Error message: `The requested resource cannot be found!
Please make sure your input parameters are correct!
cUrl error: malformed (3)
PHP error: Undefined offset: 0`
Query string: `action=display&bridge=Twitter&context=By+username&u=marcuswquinn&_cache_timeout=300&format=Html`
Version: `dev.2020-02-26`

girish

@marcusquinn said in RSS-Bridge - a good complement to Fresh RSS:

PHP error: Undefined offset: 0`

This seems to imply that something in the config file wants an array (offset 0) but maybe you gave a string? Could it be?

marcusquinn

@girish I can't see anything to do with offset in the config but here's the config.default.ini.php. I wonder if it needs something for the [proxy] settings?

; <?php exit; ?> DO NOT REMOVE THIS LINE

; This file contains the default settings for RSS-Bridge. Do not change this
; file, it will be replaced on the next update of RSS-Bridge! You can specify
; your own configuration in 'config.ini.php' (copy this file).

[system]

; Defines the timezone used by RSS-Bridge
; Find a list of supported timezones at
; https://www.php.net/manual/en/timezones.php
; timezone = "UTC" (default)
timezone = "UTC"

[cache]

; Defines the cache type used by RSS-Bridge
; "file" = FileCache (default)
type = "file"

; Allow users to specify custom timeout for specific requests.
; true  = enabled
; false = disabled (default)
custom_timeout = false

[admin]
; Advertise an email address where people can reach the administrator.
; This address is displayed on the main page, visible to everyone!
; ""    = Disabled (default)
email = ""

[proxy]

; Sets the proxy url (i.e. "tcp://192.168.0.0:32")
; ""    = Proxy disabled (default)
url = ""

; Sets the proxy name that is shown on the bridge instead of the proxy url.
; ""    = Show proxy url
name = "Hidden proxy name"

; Allow users to disable proxy usage for specific requests.
; true  = enabled
; false = disabled (default)
by_bridge = false

[authentication]

; Enables authentication for all requests to this RSS-Bridge instance.
;
; Warning: You'll have to upgrade existing feeds after enabling this option!
;
; true  = enabled
; false = disabled (default)
enable = false

; The username for authentication. Insert this name when prompted for login.
username = ""

; The password for authentication. Insert this password when prompted for login.
; Use a strong password to prevent others from guessing your login!
password = ""

[error]

; Defines how error messages are returned by RSS-Bridge
;
; "feed" = As part of the feed (default)
; "http" = As HTTP error message
; "none" = No errors are reported
output = "feed"

; Defines how often an error must occur before it is reported to the user
report_limit = 1

; --- Cache specific configuration ---------------------------------------------

[SQLiteCache]
file = "cache.sqlite"

[MemcachedCache]
host = "localhost"
port = 11211

marcusquinn

Hallelujah! Fixed in the latest version:

Here's what the results in Thunderbird look like for this interesting dude:

https://twitter.com/dvassallo

The whole point of this is to reduce all social media following to being RSS feeds. Zero distraction, just what you need to follow and nothing else.

Workaround for the same issue with Instagram usernames too for interest:

https://github.com/RSS-Bridge/rss-bridge/issues/1617#issuecomment-646679996

Basically, rss-bridge works on Cloudron - although not every bridge always works completely as there's a cat & mouse game with some sites changing things.

Worth packaging as an App IMHO, and probably an easy enough one for anyone more experienced that I at that since there's no DB to think about. Definitely pull the code from the latest master stream on GitHub.

Lastly, if you have any issues, delete the contents of /cache because it's very cache-happy and that would need emptying to truly re-test any changes. Mostly should be set & forget though.

yusf

Anyone up for packaging this?

marcusquinn

I couldn't, day (and night) job keeps me too busy - but I do think it would be a very easy one for anyone that can since it's just file-based.

thetomester13

I started packaging this up the other day and so far it seems to be working great! See repo here.

The one thing I want to play around with a bit right now is access. Part of me wants to put this app behind proxyAuth, but that might mean that any RSS feeds would need to be authenticated. I was hoping RSS feeds could be put on a path, i.e. /rss/?activity=... which could be allow-listed for proxyAuth, but since it's on the root URL I don't know if that would work. Any thoughts welcome!

girish

@thetomester13 how about enabling https://github.com/RSS-Bridge/rss-bridge/wiki/Authentication#rss-bridge-authentication instead? I prefer using upstream auth when available and leave it to the user if they want auth or not. Generally speak, you don't want to throw around Cloudron username/password inside apps (for example, inside your rss reader/aggregator).

thetomester13

@girish that's a great idea! I like the proxyAuth because it limits the number of credentials one needs to access their apps, but you're right in the way that it ends being less secure since you might end up using it in other places that might not be as secure.

I'll play around with the built-in auth!

thetomester13

@girish just added some authentication to the package in an easy-to-use config file that can be updated via the File Manager. Again the repo is here for anyone to play around with.

Is there any interest in creating tests for this and to eventually deploy to the Cloudron App Store?

necrevistonnezr

@thetomester13 said in RSS-Bridge - a good complement to Fresh RSS:

@girish just added some authentication to the package in an easy-to-use config file that can be updated via the File Manager. Again the repo is here for anyone to play around with.

Is there any interest in creating tests for this and to eventually deploy to the Cloudron App Store?

For sure!

girish

@thetomester13 awesome, if it's useful, I don't see why not have it published. Does it work well?

thetomester13

@girish I've been using a Twitter feed with it with no hiccups at all! Haven't worked with many of the other 'bridges' but I'm assuming they should work well. I'll get some tests going soon and update this thread when they're ready!

thetomester13

@girish just pushed up some tests to the repo here. It currently simply checks for a simple JSON URL of a Twitter feed - I feel like that's enough to prove that the app is up and running, but open to adding a few others if you think it'll be beneficial. Only thing to note is that the update test needs to be updated when a version does get onto the App Store.

Let me know if you're able to push this through!

girish

@thetomester13 thanks you so much! excellent work, the tests worked just like that as well. I moved the repo to https://git.cloudron.io/cloudron/rss-bridge-app, you should already have permissions.

It's also published as unstable now.

thetomester13

@girish thanks! Happy to help

robi

Can dark mode be added please?

Already done here:
https://github.com/RSS-Bridge/rss-bridge/issues/2011

thetomester13

@robi The link you posted is for someone who has implemented it on their end, but it isn't yet merged into the master branch. We should wait until this PR gets merged in, and when that's done and a new release is shipped we can update the Cloudron package to pull it in.

In the meantime, if you really want dark mode, you can download a browser extension to apply custom styles on certain domains. I like Stylus (Firefox), and then you can copy the CSS linked to from the issue you shared to display on your RSS Bridge instance.

Hope that makes sense!

robi

@thetomester13 nice you found the PR.

Did you see the comment that modified the CSS to grab the system preference?

thetomester13

@robi yeah, that's part of the PR so that when the code is merged in, RSS Bridge will automatically change mode to what the OS is.

thetomester13

Was just able to merge in a PR that adds an 'Install on Cloudron' button on RSS Bridge's Github!

nebulon

@thetomester13 that is awesome news! Thanks

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Solved RSS-Bridge - a good complement to Fresh RSS