Show HN: Extract an RSS feed from almost anything

by roks0n • 3 years ago

151 54 3 years ago

Howdy! RSSfeedASAP scratches my own itch. I run a regional podcasting directory which gets dozens of messy submission for podcasts. Often they don't even include an xml file and me being a good samaritan I sometimes do the manual work and find it myself. I got tired of that manual work and decided to build a microapp.

RSSfeedASAP is this app and I decided to release it in case someone else finds any use in it.

roks0n8• 3 years ago

I appreciate the visits and people testing things out, I'm observing the logs and I've already fixed a few problems and added a few things to my todo list. \o/

infogulch3• 3 years ago

Cool project! Dovetails nicely with a recent project of mine.

roks0n8• 3 years ago

Thank you! I am intrigued, what project are you currently working on? I would be interested to know if you come across any limitations or see any areas for improvement in my app. Feel free to reach out on X @asapship

infogulch3• 3 years ago

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37362151

ajot2• 3 years ago

Maybe I misunderstood, this tries to find RSS feeds from sites, not generate RSS feeds for sites that don't have them, right?

I've been using RSSPreview addon on Firefox for a couple years to perform this, but I really see the value of a Web service to do this anywhere. Kudos!

roks0n8• 3 years ago

The primary objective was to access RSS feeds from various platforms or to create them with known structures to facilitate access to feeds, such as iTunes, SoundCloud, YouTube, and Google Podcasts. Recently, I have incorporated the ability to generate RSS feeds for Spotify shows, as they currently do not provide access to an XML file. However, this feature is limited to shows only and does not include playlists or artists.

The main focus was on accessing podcast RSS feeds, which is why the initial efforts were concentrated on these platforms. However, plans are in place to expand support to other platforms and different types of content based on user demand.

May I ask what purpose you are using the RSSPreview addon for?

ajot2• 3 years ago

May I ask what purpose you are using the RSSPreview addon for?

Mostly, to have an RSS button in the navigation bar, but I found it useful when checking different feeds for the same page. For instance, I've recently started following some software projects on GitHub, some of which I like to follow by release, while some I like to follow by commit, for example. The preview let me see what each feed shows, and get a feel on the frequency of "news" for each feed.

Hope this can help you, I'm no podcast listener so can't really give you a hint on which podcast-related features I would look for in a news feed.

zouhair• 3 years ago

Feed43 used to be that.[0]

[0] https://web.archive.org/web/20230326224112/https://feed43.co...

idosh• 3 years ago

Do you use alternate meta tag to detect the rss feed?

roks0n8• 3 years ago

It uses several techniques one of which is also meta tags.

kevincox2• 3 years ago

Strange. I tried it with my blog and it said there was no feed https://kevincox.ca. I definitely have a alternate link tag set up.

rhabarba8• 3 years ago

If you want to create new RSS feeds from almost anything, my rssparser.lisp is still there: https://code.rosaelefanten.org/rssparser.lisp

chuchana• 3 years ago

Thanks

roks0n8• 3 years ago

This is very cool! I will check it out in more detail. I appreciate your recommendation!

rhabarba8• 3 years ago

Looking forward to feedback! I posted it on HN a while ago, but it can't hurt to have new input.

gbighin• 3 years ago

Thanks!

menotyou2• 3 years ago

Is there a docker image for this?

rhabarba8• 3 years ago

What exactly would be the point of shoving a script that is nothing more than a simple cronjob and that could theoretically just be compiled as a static binary into a Docker container?

RockRobotRock2• 3 years ago

Can I suggest removing recently extracted or having a way to hide whatever you extract from the home page?

roks0n8• 3 years ago

Good suggestion. I see people already started getting naught ideas. Change is being deployed now.

RockRobotRock2• 3 years ago

Maybe a hand curated list of feeds that could be extracted would be better? :)

darkstar999• 3 years ago

I recently installed self-hosted FreshRSS, an rss reader which can _create_ rss feeds from sites that don't provide them using techniques like xpath selectors.

https://www.freshrss.org

schnubbidubb• 3 years ago

There's also RSS-Bridge: https://github.com/RSS-Bridge/rss-bridge

"The RSS feed for websites missing it"

Vinnl• 3 years ago

There are also a bunch of similar projects in the comments of my Show HN [1] where I shared a similar project.

[1] Show HN: RSS feeds for arbitrary websites using CSS selectors - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27739568

dotBen• 3 years ago

I'm old enough to remember when browsers would highlight in the url bar that a site had an RSS feed. Well, I'm old enough to remember upgrading from Mosaic to Netscape, so I'm v old.

Cool little project.

jacooper• 3 years ago

Ironically, chrome(ihm) is starting to show that again. An RSS icon next to the URL if an RSS feed is provided.

fevangelou• 3 years ago

Shameless plug on something similar: https://feedreader.xyz

Comes as a bookmarklet and it will not only find a page's feed, it will also display it nicely directly.

Demo on Verge's feed: https://feedreader.xyz/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theverge.com%2... (you just visit the site, hit the bookmarklet & there you go)

This was primarily built after realizing that the official Google RSS plugin for Chrome was never gonna be updated and was "stuck" to that annoying layout while displaying a page's feed.

wanderingmind• 3 years ago

Tried on https://openai.com/blog and got an error `Houston, we have a problem!.` Looks like this is just a search for existing rss feeds

smusamashah• 3 years ago

I tried https://news.ycombinator.com and it's saying an error occurred.

wulu• 3 years ago

This is a good application. However, I think that among similar products, https://github.com/DIYgod/RSSHub is a more usable choice(able to generate RSS). In addition, using rsshub with the https://github.com/DIYgod/RSSHub-Radar browser extension would be more convenient.

nreece• 3 years ago

Nice, but this seems to only detect some existing RSS feeds on a given website.

* Shameless plug * Our feed generator can detect existing RSS feeds, and combines a scraper and data transformer to help create custom RSS feeds for any public webpage.

https://newsloth.com/product/feed-builder

siddbudd• 3 years ago

41$ or 59$ per month to get content in RSS form rather than visiting a couple websites and that's just the basic, not the professional version? SOLD!

1vuio0pswjnm7• 3 years ago

By examining the submissions he gets through this web form, maybe the author will discover some new podcasts.

theonlybutlet• 3 years ago

I think your tagline is misleading.

joshschreuder• 3 years ago

Nice work, I was able to extract out a feed URL from a Listnr exclusive podcast and can now add it to my normal podcast app without needing to use their stupid propriatary one. Win for openness!

croatan• 3 years ago

Is there a way to use it with Google News (with all advanced search options)? Thanks

d4rkp4ttern• 3 years ago

Maybe a bit tangential, but are there any “RSS to email” tools? Meaning — whenever I update my blog, the rss tool detects it and auto-sends an email version of it (maybe a teaser snippet) to a certain mailing list (e.g from Substack)

largo3• 3 years ago

https://github.com/rss2email/rss2email

throwaway14356• 3 years ago

i play a lot with broken feeds. for your tool i imagine one could examine previous or following editions of a page or the wayback machine.

Show HN: Extract an RSS feed from almost anything

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