RSS Combine

Combine multiple RSS feeds into a single feed, as a service.

Quick Start

Here is how you run the service locally. Make sure to clone the code into ~/go/src/github.com You may need to brew install golang and go get -u github.com/kardianos/govendor, first.

git clone git@github.com:chase-seibert/rsscombine.git
cd rsscombine
govendor sync
go run cmd/rsscombine-server/main.go
open http://localhost:8080

Configuration

You can specify configuration options as either a YAML file, or as environment variables. Environment variable names should be in all caps, prefixed by RSSCOMBINE_ with underscored included. The only exception is the feeds items. You cannot specify that list of URLs via environment variables. Instead, you can specify a RSSCOMBINE_FEEDS_URL. See "Feeds URL" bellow.

Options

See the "Example YAML File" section for example defaults.

YAML Name	Environment Variable	Description
title	RSSCOMBINE_TITLE	Title of the new RSS feed.
link	RSSCOMBINE_LINK	Link to the new RSS feed. Can be a webpage or the feed URL.
description	RSSCOMBINE_DESCRIPTION	Description of your new feed, shows in RSS readers.
author_name	RSSCOMBINE_AUTHOR_NAME	Your full name, shows in RSS readers.
author_email	RSSCOMBINE_AUTHOR_EMAIL	Your email, shows in RSS readers.
port	PORT, RSSCOMBINE_AUTHOR_PORT	Port to run the service on. For Heroku support, PORT environment variable supersedes.
cache_timeout_seconds	RSSCOMBINE_CACHE_TIMEOUT_SECONDS	Seconds to cache individual feeds in memory, as well as a feeds_url file.
server_timeout_seconds	RSSCOMBINE_SERVER_TIMEOUT_SECONDS	Seconds to timeout calls to the combined RSS feed sever.
client_timeout_seconds	RSSCOMBINE_CLIENT_TIMEOUT_SECONDS	Seconds to timeout call from the server to the individual RSS feeds.
feeds		List of feeds to combine. Cannot be specified via environment variable.
feed_urls	RSSCOMBINE_FEED_URLS	Optional: URL to parse feed URLs from. If set, this overrides the feeds setting.
feed_exclude_prefixes	RSSCOMBINE_FEED_EXCLUDE_PREFIXES	Optional: list of URL prefixes to exclude from feed_urls parsing.
feed_limit_per_feed	RSSCOMBINE_FEED_LIMIT_PER_FEED	Optional: how many items you want to pull from each sub-feed.
s3_bucket	RSSCOMBINE_S3_BUCKET	Optional: bucket name to use when uploading to S3.
s3_filename	RSSCOMBINE_S3_FILENAME	Optional: file name to use when uploading to S3.

Example YAML File

You can create a local rsscombine.yml file in this format:

title: My Technical RSS Feed
link: http://wherethisfeedishosted.com/feed
description: This is a personal collection of technical RSS feeds.
author_name: John Doe
author_email: john@example.com
port: 8080
cache_timeout_seconds: 3600
feeds:
  - http://feeds.feedburner.com/TechCrunch
  - http://feeds.arstechnica.com/arstechnica/technology-lab
  - http://www.reddit.com/r/technology/.rss
  - http://rss.slashdot.org/slashdot/slashdotMainatom

Feeds URL

You can create a public file on the web, and RSS Combine can query that file and parse out the URLs. This is especially useful for GitHub README files.

Note: the file format does not matter, RSS Combine will pull any URL it can find in the file.

Example README.md:

This is a README with some URLs.

- TechCrunch http://feeds.feedburner.com/TechCrunch
- Ars Technica http://feeds.arstechnica.com/arstechnica/technology-lab
- Reddit http://www.reddit.com/r/technology/.rss

If that file is hosted at https://raw.githubusercontent.com/chase-seibert/rsscombine/master/examples/basic.md, then you can have RSS Combine load the file by defining the YAML key feeds_url or the environment variable RSSCOMBINE_FEEDS_URL with that URL as the value.

Production

Web Server

You can run a live RSS server. The project contains an example Procfile for Heroku.

heroku create
git push heroku master
heroku open

Generate Static RSS File in S3

You can also generate a static RSS file and upload to S3. Combined with the Heroku Scheduler, this option will minimize your dyno hours and serve the RSS much faster.

Just run:

go run cmd/rsscombine-task/main.go

For S3 uploads, you need to set the following as environment variables.

Environment Variable	Description
AWS_REGION	The AWS Region your bucket is in.
AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID	The AWS access key ID for your bucket.
AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY	The AWS secret access key for your bucket.

See the Configuration section for setting s3_bucket and s3_filename.