Gator

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Gator is a CLI tool to explore, follow, and fetch RSS feeds directly from your terminal. It's lightweight, simple, and a great project to understand how real-world Go applications work.

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Introduction

Gator lets you:

• Register and log in users
• Follow RSS feeds and store them in a Postgres database
• Fetch and list new posts from your followed feeds
• Read post summaries and jump to full posts

The app is small, hackable, and easy to extend.

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Installation

Install using Go:

go install github.com/iashyam/gator@latest

Check if it works:

gator version

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Requirements

• Go
• PostgreSQL (running locally)

Install postgres using the following commands

ON linux

sudo apt update && sudo apt install postgresql postgresql-contrib

Set a password:

sudo passwd postgres

On macOS

brew install postgres

On Windows Users

If you're on Windows… consider installing Linux. You’re missing out.

Verify installation

psql --version

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Configuration

Create a .gatorconfig.json file in your home directory:

{"db_url": "postgres://username:password@host:port/database?sslmode=disable"}

This tells Gator where your Postgres database lives.

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Usage

Running gator without commands will show all available options.

Here is the full command list:

Command	Description	Arguments	Example
register	Creates a new user and logs them in	username	gator register shyam
reset	Deletes all users from the database	—	gator reset
users	Prints all users from the database	—	gator users
feeds	Lists all the feeds in the database	—	gator feeds
follow	Follows a feed by URL	url	gator follow https://abc.com/rss
following	Lists all feeds followed by the current user	—	gator following
login	Sets the current logged-in user	username	gator login shyam
agg	Aggregates feeds from all users for a duration	duration	gator agg 1h
addfeed	Adds a new feed to the database	name, url	gator addfeed tech https://t.com
unfollow	Unfollows a feed by URL	url	gator unfollow https://t.com
browse	Lists posts from feeds followed by the user	—	gator browse
help	Shows help information for all commands	—	gator help

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Project Highlights

• Full CLI tool written in Go
• Database interaction using goose + sqlc
• RSS/XML parsing
• Clean modular structure
• Published Go module

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Future Work

• Add a REST API
• Add more tests (TDD)
• Provide a Docker install method
• GitHub CLI automation / publishing
• More polished output & UX

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Version

Check your installed version:

gator version

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Acknowledgments

Special thanks to:

• Boot.dev - For providing excellent Go learning resources and project ideas.
• Lane Wagner - For mentoring, guidance, and creating the educational platform that inspired this project.

This project was built as part of the Boot.dev Go curriculum and serves as a practical demonstration of Go programming concepts.