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RSS Box – RSS for websites that do not support RSS

rssbox.herokuapp.com

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Re: RSS Box – RSS for websites that do not support RSS

#71

Post by stefansundin »

derefr wrote: post #15

Anyone ever did something like this for Facebook? I know it'd have to be subjective per user (security ACLs ⇒ different accounts seeing differing subsets of other accounts' posts); but I'd be fine with just getting my own account's subjective view, by logging into such a service using Facebook OAuth (or, if that isn't enough, then I'd be fine with handing over my Facebook creds themselves, ala XAuth, provided the ser…

RSSBox used to have Facebook support (but only for public pages, no personal content), but when Facebook started cordoning off their API two years ago, I had to turn it off since I was unable to get my application approved. The code is still there, but I am doubtful it would work even if you manage to get an API key that works. I think the best option may be to scrape the web content now, unfortunately.

Re: RSS Box – RSS for websites that do not support RSS

#72

Post by stefansundin »

chrismorgan wrote: post #43
latexr wrote: post #2

> FYI: If you enable JavaScript then you be able to access additional options in the dropdown menus. The website should still be somewhat usable, but recent versions of Firefox will try to download the RSS feeds. This is how you communicate with people with JavaScript disabled! Kudos. Most sites either present you with a blank page with no information, a blank page asking to enable JavaScript (even when the content i…

Yes, this is far better than most. But as a matter of fact, almost all of that functionality could be done without JavaScript! You can make the dropdown work by changing it to use a element (the best approach for both practical and accessibility reasons), or :focus-within, or any number of hacks (I’m partial to the checkbox hack which has served me well for many years, except for minor accessibility concerns), and th…

I will look into this. Thanks!

Re: RSS Box – RSS for websites that do not support RSS

#73

Post by stefansundin »

latexr wrote: post #2

> FYI: If you enable JavaScript then you be able to access additional options in the dropdown menus. The website should still be somewhat usable, but recent versions of Firefox will try to download the RSS feeds. This is how you communicate with people with JavaScript disabled! Kudos. Most sites either present you with a blank page with no information, a blank page asking to enable JavaScript (even when the content i…

> What if we don’t have control over the frequency of requests (e.g. using a service like Feedly)? Do those happen often enough that we’d need to host the app ourselves?

I know the wording is a bit vague, and I know that most services don't let you customize this. I added it after I suddenly started receiving tons of traffic caused by, I suspect, a single user. This person was purposefully fetching feeds multiple times a minute.

Anyhow, if you aren't actively trying to abuse the service, you should be good. Some RSS readers have "boost" features to fetch feeds more frequently (often a paid feature).

Once I am able to add some good caching, then I may be able to remove that notice. But right now, the service is kinda overloaded and that is why some of the services (Twitter and Instagram in particular) may give you errors at the moment.

Re: RSS Box – RSS for websites that do not support RSS

#74

Post by stefansundin »

latexr wrote: post #2

> FYI: If you enable JavaScript then you be able to access additional options in the dropdown menus. The website should still be somewhat usable, but recent versions of Firefox will try to download the RSS feeds. This is how you communicate with people with JavaScript disabled! Kudos. Most sites either present you with a blank page with no information, a blank page asking to enable JavaScript (even when the content i…

> Though it should be “then you will be able”.

Fixed. Thanks! :)

Re: RSS Box – RSS for websites that do not support RSS

#75

Post by stefansundin »

hankchinaski wrote: post #45

serious question: does anybody use RSS nowadays?

Yes! Unfortunately it is no longer mainstream since the monetization opportunities are fewer. But a lot of tech-savvy people prefer it for many reasons:

1. You get a personalized view of what you have and have not read. 2. You can scan over a lot of posts very quickly, and pick out what you want to read. 3. You can aggregate a lot of different websites in a single place. No need to visit each website individually. 4. Increased privacy. 5. Less tracking. 6. Increased control. 7. Fewer ads.

Probably more reasons, but these are the primary reasons why I still prefer RSS.

Re: RSS Box – RSS for websites that do not support RSS

#76

Post by jeremy0x4a »

qznc wrote: post #25

Off topic but since we are talking about RSS feeds: Is there a web service to replay feeds? Use case are old blog archive one wants to (re-) read sequentially from the start but not in binge mode. So maybe one post per day or week. I'm thinking about the old posts of Aaron Swartz or Steve Yegge. Just adding the feed to a feed reader is often not sufficient because the feed only contains the last 20 entries or so.

Perhaps the tool behind https://rewind.website ?

Re: RSS Box – RSS for websites that do not support RSS

#77

Post by s0l1dsnak3123 »

You can actually get RSS feeds for YouTube: emacs users like myself who consume YouTube via elfeed have been doing it like so:

" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/feeds/videos.xml?playlist_id=

Or

" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/feeds/videos.xml?channel_id=

More info here: https://joshrollinswrites.com/help-desk-head-desk/20200611/

It really helps to break away from the addictive properties of YouTube's "Up Next" algorithm

Re: RSS Box – RSS for websites that do not support RSS

#78

Post by bscphil »

s0l1dsnak3123 wrote: post #77

You can actually get RSS feeds for YouTube: emacs users like myself who consume YouTube via elfeed have been doing it like so: " rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/feeds/videos.xml?playlist_id= Or " rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/feeds/videos.xml?channel_id= More info here: https://joshrollinswrites.com/help-desk-head-desk/20200611/ It really helps to break away from the addictive properties of YouTube's…

Wow... I wrote my own WebSub receiver and put it on an always-on server to get around the fact that I assumed YouTube doesn't have RSS from the fact that I couldn't find this information anywhere.

Re: RSS Box – RSS for websites that do not support RSS

#79

Post by s0l1dsnak3123 »

bscphil wrote: post #78
s0l1dsnak3123 wrote: post #77

You can actually get RSS feeds for YouTube: emacs users like myself who consume YouTube via elfeed have been doing it like so: " rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/feeds/videos.xml?playlist_id= Or " rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/feeds/videos.xml?channel_id= More info here: https://joshrollinswrites.com/help-desk-head-desk/20200611/ It really helps to break away from the addictive properties of YouTube's…

Wow... I wrote my own WebSub receiver and put it on an always-on server to get around the fact that I assumed YouTube doesn't have RSS from the fact that I couldn't find this information anywhere.

You can get an XML dump of all your subscribed channels which contains these links: https://www.youtube.com/subscription_manager (scroll to the bottom)

Re: RSS Box – RSS for websites that do not support RSS

#80

Post by quickthrower2 »

carapace wrote: post #29

Related (maybe) but tangential, does anyone know of a good web to text converter? Back in the day you used to just use Lynx, is that still the way or has it been surpassed?

I’ve been using this programmatically https://www.npmjs.com/package/html-to-text not sure if it can be run from command line but it’s be easy enough to write a wrapper.

Also I reckon pandoc is worth a try.

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