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DeLopSpot | 4 years ago

It seems that RSS feed generators are a bit like static site generators: it's often thought to be easier to make your own than to learn to use someone else's.

Anyway, here's another self-hosted open source RSS feed generator for arbitrary websites: https://github.com/hueyy/HungryHippo

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lucideer|4 years ago

Because the design of RSS/Atom put all of the complexity on the client (polling, state management, etc.) it's literally the same as static site generation. And by "the same", I don't mean "an equivalent but separate problem". I actually think having two separate generators—one outputting HTML, the other RSS—seems a bit wasteful. They're both parsing (presumably) the same content hierarchy and outputting it as SGML/XML-ish documents served over HTTP. One app should probably just do both (and it's easy to make your own that does)

askhan|4 years ago

This entire post has galvanized me to write up an idea I've been noodling over as I work on a reader myself: a standard that would eliminate precisely the waste you mention by specifying within the HTML all that's needed for a feed.

See https://sfeed.org. In the spirit of the multi-meaninged RSS acronym itself, the S might stand for scrape, selector, speed, or of course Scotty.

Vinni, might you be interested in enabling the standard in Feed Me Up?

pedro1976|4 years ago

I disagree. I find the it wasteful, that every source will implement their way of rendering data. If we ignore the ad-problem for a moment, I would love if RSS would be the output of every website and the client then renders HTML to achieve the best UX possible. No broken layouts, no distractions, no dark pattern, just content.

Vinnl|4 years ago

I mean, it's exactly like a static site generator — I'd call it JAMstack, except the "API" is a plain HTML page and the markup is RSS :)

So yeah, definitely straightforward enough for a case of NIH syndrome. I think putting together the website took more time than writing the tool itself...