This is a simple planet-style feed aggregator that fetches feeds via node-feedparser and generates a static site using mustache.

The process of feed aggregation, static site generation and deployment to S3 was designed to be easy to run on Heroku as a single worker dyno that executes at regular intervals via Heroku Scheduler. However, it can just as easily be configured as a cron job, or run through other means.

Building The Site

Set the environment variable ORIGIN to the base url that the site is served from. Example, export ORIGIN='http://planet.openbadges.org'. Note, should include the protocol, and not end in a trailing slash.

Run node build.js, which will fetch feeds and create the planet site in the static directory.

Uploading The Site To S3

You can upload the site to S3 by setting the S3_KEY, S3_SECRET, and S3_BUCKET environment variables to reasonable values and then running node upload.js.

Managing Feeds

Feeds can be Atom or RSS. You can manage the list of feeds using a JSON file in the repository, or via a Google Spreadsheet. Both options are mutually exclusive: if the SPREADSHEET_URL environment variable is non-empty, then the Google Spreadsheet will be preferred over JSON.

Using JSON

Just edit feeds.json, adding or removing entries as necessary.

Using Google Spreadsheets

First, import feeds.example.csv into a new Google Spreadsheet. Then go to the "File" menu in Google Spreadsheets and choose "Publish to the web"; check the "Automatically republish when changes are made" box, and copy the link to the published data into the SPREADSHEET_URL environment variable.

Do not change the very first row of the spreadsheet (i.e., the column names). Other than that, feel free to add or remove rows as necessary.

Security

Currently, the code doesn't sanitize the HTML coming from the feeds, so either host the static site on its own domain or make sure you're only pulling content from trusted sources. Or, fork the code and add sanitization!