use-feeds.txt (4421B) [raw]
1 # RSS/Atom feeds; what are they and why you should care 2 3 _Published: February 9, 2021_ 4 5 I've always wanted this site to be an homage to tech that I enjoy 6 using, and recently, that's included old-school RSS/Atom feeds. 7 However, up until now, I had only been a feed consumer and had 8 never produced my own. So, this past weekend I decided to hunker 9 down and read enough of the spec to generate one for this site. 10 11 But let's back up -- what is a feed? Why should you care? 12 13 A feed is simply a standardized listing of items a source (blog, 14 vlog, newspaper, etc) has generated recently. Users then consume 15 multiple feeds to get centralized notifications on new content. 16 Think "following" on social media, but generalized for any content 17 accessible on the web. 18 19 The most important feature of a feed is that it has been 20 standardized and is not controlled by any individual corporation. 21 This ensures that users are not only free from vendor lock-in, but 22 it also allows for an increasingly diverse set of clients and 23 sources. 24 25 For example, there are clients ranging from FOSS text only terminal 26 clients like [`newsboat(1)`](https://newsboat.org) to commercial apps 27 like [Feedly](https://feedly.com). And despite being drastically 28 different UI's, their purpose is the same: allow you to subscribe 29 to any number of feeds, and centralize your notifications. 30 31 The idea is simple, but it's transformed the way I interact with 32 the web. It saves me time in not browsing the infinite scroll that 33 has become social media, and it allows me to stay up to date with 34 smaller blogs that don't post frequently (cough, like yours truly, 35 cough). 36 37 Consider a new blog post on this site. Without a feed, you'd have 38 to periodically check my `blog(7)` for updates or hear about it 39 through some other link aggregation or social media site 40 (Hackernews, Reddit, etc). Adding a feed allows those who want to 41 follow to get notifications, without checking other locations or 42 having to waste time checking back periodically. 43 44 So if you haven't tried a feed reader ever, go find one that suits 45 your fancy and give it a try! In an era where user upvoted content 46 reigns king (Reddit, Facebook, etc), it's really empowering as a 47 user to decide what you see updates for and to be able to check 48 them on your own time. And if you're a publisher of any content, 49 consider creating a feed for others to follow. I'll certainly 50 appreciate it! 51 52 It's never too late to take control of your digital habits, and 53 using a feed reader is a good place to start. 54 55 ## Implementation 56 57 If you read this far, I thought you might also be interested in 58 hearing not only the what and the why but also the how. 59 60 Due to the recent migration to using `mdoc(7)` as the markup for this 61 site (detailed in [my-old-man(7)](/blog/my-old-man.html)), I knew that 62 finding an off-the-shelf feed generator would be unlikely. 63 Plus, with my general desire to keep the site build-able by base 64 OpenBSD, I figured it was as good an excuse as any to read the 65 spec and generate it myself. 66 67 I ended up choosing Atom over RSS mostly based on some online 68 opinions that it is a stricter standard, but I can't say much to 69 back that up. What I can say is that after the initial confusion 70 of how to escape the embedded HTML in the XML feed, it was pretty 71 smooth sailing. 72 73 The full implementation is in 74 [genatom.sh](https://git.sr.ht/~akarle/alexkarle.com/tree/5c1fd5edca840e3ec2f8a80b8fed763d30cfa11a/item/bin/genatom.sh) 75 and basically boils down to: 76 77 1. `grep(1)` call through the blog.7 file to get a list of entries 78 and their dates 79 2. Print the header of the XML (with newest date from 1.) 80 3. For each item in entries, add the XML entry along with the 81 content as generated by `mandoc(1)` with the `-O` fragment option. 82 This ensures the "notification" has the full post -- users 83 never even need to visit the site! 84 4. End by printing the footer of the XML 85 86 And that's it! The only real trick was to use 87 [CDATA sections](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CDATA) around the entry 88 content in the XML to escape the HTML tags. 89 90 And of course, like everything else in this blog, it rebuilds on 91 `git-push` via a call to `make(1)`. 92 93 ## See Also 94 95 - [My Atom feed](https://alexkarle.com/atom.xml) 96 - [Wiki page on Atom](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atom_(Web_standard%29) 97 - [Atom RFC](https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc4287) 98 - [Related advocacy](https://atthis.link/blog/2021/rss.html) 99 100 [Back to blog](/blog)