carlbennett/rss-news-bot

Polls RSS feeds, aggregates the articles, then notifies users about them over multiple services.

RSS News Bot

Preface

• Polls multiple RSS feeds.
• Aggregates all articles found, with duplicates excluded.
• Searches for multiple keywords.
• Upon finding new articles, dispatches multiple services.
• Each service can define its own way of handling a new article.

There is already the HipChat service class which allows new articles to be posted in HipChat rooms given an API token.

Installation

1. Clone the repository locally.
2. Ensure the execute bit is enabled (i.e. unix permissions 0755) for /main.php and that /usr/bin/php exists.
3. Copy the /Settings.sample.json to `/Settings.json``` and update it to your taste.
4. Run the /main.php file as if it was a shell script (e.g. $ ./main.php).

Systemd Service

Instead of running the bot by running the /main.php file as a shell script, you could run it by using the Systemd service unit file.

1. Copy the /rss-news-bot.service to /etc/systemd/system/rss-news-bot.service.
2. Copy the bot to /opt/rss-news-bot/ or modify the Systemd unit file.
3. Run sudo systemctl daemon-reload to make it aware of the new unit.
4. Run sudo systemctl start rss-news-bot.service to run the bot.
5. Run sudo systemctl enable rss-news-bot.service to have it run at boot.

If you want to watch the bot's output, you can run the following: sudo journalctl -f -u rss-news-bot.service -o cat

rss-news-bot's Issues

Reddit feeds do not grab any articles

A fix was introduced to attempt fixing parsing Reddit feeds: bdd6fec

While it did fix some PHP warnings that were being thrown and introduce some error handling while parsing feeds, it did not solve the issue. Reddit feeds do not return any articles and do not throw any errors.

Sample log:

[02/12/2016 6:02:23 AM CST] Initialized 22 feeds.
[02/12/2016 6:02:23 AM CST] Initialized 6 services.
[02/12/2016 6:02:23 AM CST] RSS News Bot ready for duty.
[02/12/2016 6:02:23 AM CST] Updated Ars Technica As-it-happens feed, found 20 new articles.
[02/12/2016 6:02:23 AM CST] Updated Ars Technica Featured feed, found 20 new articles.
[02/12/2016 6:02:23 AM CST] Updated CNN Top Stories feed, found 25 new articles.
[02/12/2016 6:02:23 AM CST] Updated CNN U.S. feed, found 22 new articles.
[02/12/2016 6:02:23 AM CST] Updated CNN World feed, found 21 new articles.
[02/12/2016 6:02:24 AM CST] Updated Engadget feed, found 25 new articles.
[02/12/2016 6:02:24 AM CST] Updated Forbes Headlines feed, found 20 new articles.
[02/12/2016 6:02:25 AM CST] Updated Forbes Popular Stories feed, found 9 new articles.
[02/12/2016 6:02:25 AM CST] Updated Gizmodo feed, found 20 new articles.
[02/12/2016 6:02:25 AM CST] Updated Lifehacker feed, found 18 new articles.
[02/12/2016 6:02:25 AM CST] Updated Mashable feed, found 30 new articles.
[02/12/2016 6:02:26 AM CST] Updated Reuters Top News feed, found 19 new articles.
[02/12/2016 6:02:26 AM CST] Updated Reuters U.S. News feed, found 18 new articles.
[02/12/2016 6:02:26 AM CST] Updated Reuters World News feed, found 15 new articles.
[02/12/2016 6:02:27 AM CST] Updated The Free Thought Project feed, found 10 new articles.
[02/12/2016 6:02:27 AM CST] Updated Frontpage of Reddit feed, found 1 new article.
[02/12/2016 6:02:27 AM CST] Updated Reddit /r/news feed, found 0 new articles.
[02/12/2016 6:02:27 AM CST] Updated Reddit /r/worldnews feed, found 0 new articles.
[02/12/2016 6:02:28 AM CST] Updated Reddit /r/dallas feed, found 0 new articles.
[02/12/2016 6:02:29 AM CST] Updated Reddit /r/security feed, found 0 new articles.
[02/12/2016 6:02:29 AM CST] Updated TechCrunch feed, found 20 new articles.
[02/12/2016 6:02:29 AM CST] Updated TorrentFreak feed, found 10 new articles.