pod_feeder_v2

Publishes RSS/Atom feeds to Diaspora*

This is a lightweight, customizable "bot" script to harvest RSS/Atom feeds and re-publish them to the Diaspora social network. It is posted here without warranty, for public use.

v2 is a complete re-write of the original pod_feeder script which was written (poorly) in perl and is no longer supported. Migrating to this version is recommended.

Installation

pod_feeder_v2 requires python3. You can easily install the dependencies with pip:

System-wide

sudo pip3 install pod-feeder-v2

Individual user

pip3 install --user pod-feeder-v2

When installing as a non-privilegd user, make sure you have ~/.local/bin in your $PATH

Migrating from pod_feeder "classic"

1. pod_feeder_v2's database schema is backward-compatible with the original, so you can point the script at your existing feed.db file (or whatever yours is called).

2. The --title-tags and --url-tags arguments have not been carried forward because in practice they generally create lots of spurious tags, and the 'stop words' feature is difficult to implement. --user-agent is not currently implemented because the feedparser library does not support it.

3. Several new options, --summary, --debug, and --quiet have been added.

Usage

This script is intended to be run as a cron job, which might look something like this:

@hourly pod-feeder --feed-id myfeed --feed-url http://example.com/feeds/rss --pod-url https://diaspora.example.com --username user --password ******** --quiet

There is also a database cleaner script that you can run as often as you like to keep your database size under control:

@weekly pf-clean-db feed.db > /dev/null 2>&1

usage: pod-feeder [-h] [--aspect-id ASPECT_ID] [--auto-tag AUTO_TAG]
                  [--category-tags] [--database DATABASE] [--embed-image]
                  --feed-id FEED_ID --feed-url FEED_URL
                  [--ignore-tag IGNORE_TAG] [--limit LIMIT] [--no-branding]
                  --pod-url POD_URL [--post-raw-link] [--timeout TIMEOUT]
                  [--username USERNAME] [--via VIA] [--summary | --full]
                  (--password PASSWORD | --fetch-only) [--debug | --quiet]

optional arguments:
  -h, --help            show this help message and exit
  --aspect-id ASPECT_ID
                        Numerical aspect ID to share with. May be specified
                        multiple times (default: 'public')
  --auto-tag AUTO_TAG   Hashtags to add to all posts. May be specified
                        multiple times
  --category-tags       Automatically hashtagify RSS item 'categories' if any
  --database DATABASE   The file to store feed data (default: 'feed.db')
  --embed-image         Embed an image in the post if a link exists
  --feed-id FEED_ID     An arbitrary label for this feed
  --feed-url FEED_URL   The feed URL
  --ignore-tag IGNORE_TAG
                        Hashtag to filter out. May be specified multiple times
  --limit LIMIT         Only post n items per script run, to prevent post-
                        spamming
  --no-branding         Do not include 'via pod_feeder_v2' footer to posts
  --pod-url POD_URL     The pod URL
  --post-raw-link       Post the raw link instead of hyperlinking the article
                        title
  --timeout TIMEOUT     How many hours to keep re-trying failed posts (default
                        72)
  --username USERNAME   The D* login username
  --via VIA             Sets the 'posted via' footer text (default:
                        'pod_feeder_v2')
  --summary             Post the summary text of the feed item
  --full, --body        Post the full text of the feed item
  --password PASSWORD   The D* user password
  --fetch-only          Don't publish to Diaspora, queue the new feed items
                        for later
  --debug               Show debugging output
  --quiet               Suppress normal output

A Note on YouTube Feeds

It is possible to publish a YouTube channel's feed, by using the following URL format:

https://www.youtube.com/feeds/videos.xml?channel_id=<channel id>