Articlay 📰

A comprehensive news aggregator that fetches articles from popular magazines and news sources worldwide, including India and Tamil Nadu, and presents them in a beautiful, minimalistic UI.

✨ Zero Configuration CLI - Install and use immediately with pip install articlay!

Features

News Aggregation

• 🌍 Global Coverage: Fetches from 35+ news sources including Reuters, Forbes, The Economist, Wired, Nature, BBC, CNN, Al Jazeera, and more
• 🇮🇳 Indian News: Includes The Hindu, Times of India, Indian Express, NDTV, Hindustan Times, Zee News, India Today, DD News
• 🏛️ Tamil Nadu News: Features Dinamalar, Dinamani, Daily Thanthi
• 🎬 Movie & Film: Mubi, Letterboxd, RogerEbert.com, IndieWire, Criterion Collection, Film Companion, Filmfare, Variety
• 📚 Literature: Literary Hub, Project Gutenberg, The Paris Review, Granta, New Yorker Books, Hindu Literary Review
• ✍️ Writing: Medium, Substack, Wattpad, Electric Literature, Poets.org, Reddit r/writing
• 📂 Categorized Articles: Organized by World, India, Tamil Nadu, Movie, Literature, Writing, Reddit, Business, Technology, Science, Culture, and more
• ⚡ Frequent Updates: Runs automatically every 15 minutes
• 🔄 Deduplication: Intelligent article deduplication to prevent duplicates across sources
• 🎯 One Article Per Source: Displays one unique article from each news source per update

Wikipedia & Special Content

• 📚 Wikipedia Article of the Day: Featured article with full content
• 🖼️ Wikipedia Picture of the Day: Beautiful daily images from Wikimedia Commons
• 📜 Wikipedia Quote of the Day: Inspiring quotes from Wikiquote
• 🎲 Random Wikipedia Article: Discover something new every day
• 📅 On This Day in History: Historical events that happened on the current date
• 💡 Daily Quotes: Inspirational quotes from multiple sources

User Interface

• 🌐 GitHub Pages UI: Beautiful, minimalistic interface to browse today's articles
• 🎨 1970s Retro Design: Bold red Courier New header with vintage text shadow effects
• 🌈 Retro Article Highlights: Colorful gradient left border appears on hover for a vintage magazine feel
• 🎭 Easter Egg: Jean-Michel Basquiat-style art revealed when scrolling to bottom (footer fades away)
• 👆 Touch Gestures: Swipe left/right to switch between tabs (no refresh), pull down to refresh
• 🌓 Dark Mode: Toggle between light and dark themes with localStorage persistence
• 🔍 Powerful Search: Real-time search by keywords or source names (e.g., "forbes", "technology", "climate")
  • Search across all fields or filter by source name, title, description, or category
  • Case-insensitive with instant results as you type
  • Clear search to return to all articles
• 📊 Statistics Dashboard: View article counts, sources, and categories at a glance
• 📱 Responsive Design: Works perfectly on desktop, tablet, and mobile
• 🕐 IST Timezone: All times and dates use Indian Standard Time

Data Management

• 💾 Gist Storage: Stores current date's article data (title, description, link, publish date, category) to GitHub Gist
• 🎯 Current Date Focus: Only keeps today's articles to maintain optimal performance (keeps JSON ~386KB instead of accumulating to 11+MB over time)

Installation

Prerequisites

• Python 3.7 or higher
• GitHub Personal Access Token (for Gist archiving)

Setup

1. Clone the repository:

git clone https://github.com/pappater/articlay.git
cd articlay

2. Install dependencies:

pip install -r requirements.txt

3. Set up your GitHub token (for Gist archiving):

export GITHUB_TOKEN="your_github_personal_access_token"

Or create a .env file:

GITHUB_TOKEN=your_github_personal_access_token

Usage

Daily Automation (Recommended)

The repository is configured to automatically fetch articles every day at 6:00 AM IST via GitHub Actions. The scraped articles are:

1. Stored in a GitHub Gist
2. Displayed on the live UI

No manual intervention is required!

Command-Line Interface (CLI)

Articlay provides a powerful CLI for viewing articles right in your terminal.

✨ Zero Configuration Required! The CLI works immediately after installation with no setup needed.

Installation

Install from PyPI (recommended):

pip install articlay

That's it! No configuration, no Gist ID, no setup. Just install and use.

Or install from source:

git clone https://github.com/pappater/articlay.git
cd articlay
pip install -e .

Quick Start (No Setup Needed!)

# Install and use immediately
pip install articlay

# Show all articles
articlay --all

# Show India news
articlay --india --limit 10

# Get one random article
articlay random

# Show Tamil Nadu news
articlay --tamilnadu --limit 5

# Show tech articles
articlay --codetech -l 15

✅ Works out of the box - No Gist ID or environment variables needed!
✅ Same content as web UI - Access all articles from the terminal
✅ Perfect for developers - Fast, lightweight, and scriptable

Available Category Flags

• --foryou - Curated selection from all sources
• --india or --indi - India news
• --tamilnadu or --tn - Tamil Nadu news
• --movie - Movie reviews and film news
• --literature or --lit - Literature and books
• --writing - Writing tips and author resources
• --reddit - Popular Reddit posts
• --codetech or --tech - Technology and programming
• --artculture or --art - Art exhibitions and culture
• --others - All other categories
• --all - Show all articles from today

Examples

# View help
articlay --help

# Show specific category with limit
articlay --india --limit 10
articlay --movie -l 5

# Random article discovery
articlay random

# Show all available articles
articlay --all --limit 0

Advanced Configuration (Optional)

Note: Configuration is NOT required for normal use! Only needed for advanced scenarios.

# Use your own Gist ID (optional)
export ARTICLAY_GIST_ID="your_gist_id"
articlay --all

# Use a private Gist (optional)
export GITHUB_TOKEN="your_token"
articlay --india

# Or pass Gist ID as argument (optional)
articlay --gist-id your_gist_id --all

For complete CLI documentation, see CLI_GUIDE.md.

Manual Scraper Execution

To manually run the article scraper:

# Set your GitHub token (required for Gist storage)
export GITHUB_TOKEN="your_github_token_here"

# Run the daily scraper
python daily_gist_job.py

This will:

• Fetch articles from all configured news sources
• Store them in the configured GitHub Gist
• Organize them by date and category

Legacy Magzter Tool

The original articlay.py tool for Magzter is still available:

# Basic usage (uses placeholder data)
python articlay.py --magazines 20 --articles 10

Output

The tool generates two types of output:

1. Console Output: Displays selected articles with titles, magazine names, and links
2. JSON File: Saves articles locally as articlay-YYYY-MM-DD.json
3. GitHub Gist: Archives articles as markdown to a public Gist (if enabled)

Example Output

📰 Articlay - Magzter Article Aggregator
==================================================

Fetching top 10 popular magazines...
Found 10 magazines

Selecting 5 random articles from different magazines...

📚 Selected Articles:
--------------------------------------------------

1. Magazine 1 - Article 3
   Magazine: Magazine 1
   Link: https://www.magzter.com/magazine-1/article-3

2. Magazine 5 - Article 2
   Magazine: Magazine 5
   Link: https://www.magzter.com/magazine-5/article-2

...

✓ Archived to Gist: https://gist.github.com/...
✓ Articles saved to: articlay-2024-01-15.json

Setup for Your Own Instance

If you want to run Articlay on your own repository:

1. Fork the repository

2. Create a GitHub Gist

   • Go to https://gist.github.com/
   • Create a new gist with filename magazine-articles.json
   • Initialize it with {}
   • Copy the Gist ID from the URL

3. Update Configuration

   • Edit gist_config.py with your Gist ID
   • Edit docs/index.html to update the GIST_ID constant

4. Set up GitHub Token

   • Go to GitHub Settings → Developer settings → Personal access tokens
   • Generate a new token with gist scope
   • Add it as a repository secret named GIST_TOKEN

5. Enable GitHub Pages

   • Go to repository Settings → Pages
   • Source: Deploy from a branch
   • Branch: main, folder: /docs
   • Save

6. Enable GitHub Actions

   • The workflows will run automatically
   • Articles will be fetched daily at 6 AM IST

Requirements

See requirements.txt:

• requests>=2.31.0
• beautifulsoup4>=4.12.0
• lxml>=4.9.0

Live Demo

Visit the live UI: https://pappater.github.io/articlay/

Browse daily articles in a clean, minimalistic interface organized by category.

News Sources

World News (7 sources)

• Reuters, Time, The Atlantic, NPR, BBC, CNN, Al Jazeera

Business & Economics (3 sources)

• Forbes, The Economist, Bloomberg

Technology (1 source)

• Wired

Science & Nature (5 sources)

• National Geographic, Scientific American, Popular Science, New Scientist, Nature

Culture (2 sources)

• The New Yorker, Smithsonian Magazine

India (8 sources)

• The Hindu, Times of India, Indian Express, NDTV, Hindustan Times, Zee News, India Today, DD News

Tamil Nadu (3 sources)

• Dinamalar, Dinamani, Daily Thanthi

Wikipedia & Special Content (6 sources)

• Wikipedia Article of the Day
• Wikipedia Picture of the Day
• Random Wikipedia Article
• Wikiquote Quote of the Day
• On This Day in History
• Daily Inspirational Quotes

Total: 35+ sources across 9 categories

Automation

Articles are automatically scraped and stored every 15 minutes via GitHub Actions. Non-working scrapers are gracefully skipped.

Note: The 15-minute schedule is aggressive and may cause rate limiting with some sources. Monitor the GitHub Actions logs and adjust the schedule in .github/workflows/daily-gist.yml if needed (e.g., change to 0 */1 * * * for hourly updates).

Scraper Status

For tracking which scrapers are working and which need attention, see SCRAPER_STATUS.md. This document helps identify:

• Newly added scrapers pending production testing
• Known issues with specific scrapers
• Alternative sources when scrapers fail
• Testing instructions for individual scrapers

License

MIT License

Contributing

Contributions are welcome! Please feel free to submit a Pull Request.