dtbell 1.1.1

A highly configurable desktop notifier for RSS/Atom feeds.

Ditch The Bell

A desktop notifier for RSS/Atom feeds that lets you closely configure features of the freedesktop notification specification to unlock the most customizable feed notification experience possible on Linux.

Features

• Configure a custom command to launch when clicking on a notification (e.g., your favorite application, shell command, custom script). The feed entry link will be passed as an argument, allowing the command to open the link directly.

• A feed profile system built to separate notification behaviors for each of your different types of feeds (e.g., news, blogs, podcasts, videos, etc).

• Define patterns in your profiles to filter feeds so you're only notified for the entries that are relevant to you.

• Configuration options to fine-tune feed fetching behavior such as the search window, search interval, etc.

Install

PyPI

Dependencies:

• Python 3.7+
• Optional: Before installing, it is recommended that you install PyGObject from your distribution's package manager for GObject Introspection. The package is typically named one of the following: python-gi, python-gobject, or pygobject on most distributions.

Ditch The Bell is available on PyPI and can be installed via pip, the Python package manager.

pip install dtbell

---

Arch Linux (AUR):

Ditch The Bell is available in the Arch AUR: dtbell-git

Usage

To run, simply execute:

dtbell

If needed, use the --debug flag to print debug logs to the console:

dtbell --debug 

Configuring

File Locations

All relevant files are stored in accordance with the XDG Base Directory Specification.

Configuration files config.ini, urls: are located in $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/dtbell/.

If $XDG_CONFIG_HOME is not set, the default location is $HOME/.config/dtbell/.

Data files dtbell.db, dtbell.log: are located in $XDG_DATA_HOME/dtbell/.

If $XDG_DATA_HOME is not set, the default location is $HOME/.local/share/dtbell/.

If you enable thumbnail downloads, thumbnails will be temporarily downloaded to /tmp/dtbell/.

Adding Feeds

To add feeds, edit the urls file, adding one URL per line.

https://example.com/feed/rss.xml
https://another-example.com/feed/rss.xml

Authenticated feeds are not yet supported.

Configuration Options

To modify the configuration settings, edit the config.ini file.

Feed Configuration

The [feed] section in your config.ini file serves as the primary area for defining feed fetch behavior. Below are the available configuration options for the [feed] section:

Name	Description	Data Type	Default Value
search_window	The number of days to go back when searching for new feeds. Cached entries are retained for this duration.	Integer	1
search_interval	Time interval (in minutes) between each search for new entries.	Integer	30
search_on_startup	Determines if a search is initiated upon application launch.	Boolean	true
flood_cap	Maximum number of notifications to avoid notification flooding. Set to 0 for unlimited.	Integer	10
fetch_timeout	Maximum time (in seconds) the app will wait for a response after requesting a feed.	Integer	10

Defining Profiles

The profile system is designed to adapt to the diverse array of feeds that modern RSS users often manage (news feeds, blog feeds, podcast feeds, etc). It allows for tailored notification behavior based on the nature of each feed. You can define custom notification profiles for these specific types of feeds in your config.ini file. For instance, a profile for video based feeds could look like this:

[video]
entry_age = true
persist_on_click = true
launcher = mpv 
launcher_args = '--save-position-on-quit'

A [default] profile is defined in the config.ini file and serves as the baseline configuration for all feeds not tagged with a custom profile. Below are the available configuration options for the [default] section:

Name	Description	Data Type	Default Value
launcher	Shell command to open notifications; must accept a URL as argument.	String	default_browser
launch_args	Argument(s) to pass to launcher; e.g., '-P news' if launcher was set to firefox.	String	''
transience	Determines whether notifications are temporary and disappear after a short time.	Boolean	false
persist_on_click	Keep notification after click; useful if transience is set to false.	Boolean	false
urgency	Notification urgency: 0 (low), 1 (normal), 2 (critical).	Integer	1
timeout	Timeout in ms; -1 for server default, 0 for never.	Integer	-1
entry_age	Display entry age.	Boolean	false
download_thumbnails	Download thumbnails; consult your feed's TOS and be mindful of bandwidth usage.	Boolean	true
require_patterns	Require entries to contain at least one of these patterns; e.g., 'Open Source', Linux	Custom (Comma-separated values)	''
exclude_patterns	Exclude entries that contain any one of these patterns; e.g., Proprietary, Windows	Custom (Comma-separated values)	''

You can modify the default profile directly to affect all untagged feeds, or define custom profiles like the [video] profile if you wish to customize settings for a select group of feeds. Omitting fields in a custom profile will cause those settings to fall back to the values defined in the default profile.

Adding Profiles to URLs

As mentioned earlier, the urls file should contain one RSS feed URL per line. To associate a profile with a specific feed, simply append the profile name (the name within the square brackets [ ] in your config.ini) to the end of the feed URL, separated by a space. The format is simply url profile. For instance, using the [video] profile from earlier, an example urls file would look like this:

https://example.com/feed/rss.xml video
https://another-example.com/feed/rss.xml video

Contributing

This program is in its early stages of development and may have some rough edges or bugs. If you encounter any issues and want to contribute, feel free to submit an issue or open a PR!

Note: All PRs must adhere to PEP 8 and pass pylint checks.

License

This program is licensed under the GPLv3; see the LICENSE file.