Add custom feed from URL

[Elaborendum]

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe.
The ability to search and discover feeds is pretty good, but sometimes you just want to add a feed directly from a URL instead of searching for it, or sometimes it might not be found either.

Describe the solution you'd like
An option to add a feed directly from a URL without having to search for it.

Describe alternatives you've considered
Currently, searching for it and hoping it's there.

Additional context
Maybe this already exists in the app and I just can't find it. Or maybe this is intentional? I never used Pulse News.

[aerotoad]

The app uses the Feedly Search API to find and add the sources as well as the Feedly Streams API to retrieve the content and display it. There are no plans to add a custom provider.

Nevertheless, the Feedly Search is supposed to support searching feeds by URL and so far I didn't have any trouble doing so.

[shuvashish76]

Feedly Search is supposed to support searching feeds by URL and so far I didn't have any trouble doing so.

Feedly Search API is nice but it's not everything. There are many useful sites that doesn't support RSS but we could generate RSS using some other tools.e.g. RSS-proxy (other related tools : https://github.com/damoeb/rss-proxy#related-projects)

So IMO it's a big loss if Thud doesn't allow it's users to use custom RSS URL.

Thanks

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https://github.com/RSS-Bridge/rss-bridge#rant

😅

[alxlg]

@aerotoad

so far I didn't have any trouble doing so.

Ironically it doesn't work with .atoms feeds available by default on GitHub like the ones for commits and releases...

[travisfw]

I have an rss.xml url that is not in feedly. Apparently Thud cannot add this?

[aerotoad]

I've looked at different possibilities for this since the Feedly api is becoming less and less reliable as time goes by and they look to be shifting their product offering away from feeds. Unfortunately I haven't been able to find a solution that requires no servers. The entire point of Thud is for it to be a standalone app that doesn't require hosting a server to provide service, so if anyone has any ideas about how this could be achieved, please let me know and I'll look into implementing a system that doesn't rely on Feedly or any other external vendors.

[shuvashish76]

Feeder & Read You are the two most popular apps that doesn't require servers. RSS links works on them without any external vendors.
(From my testing Feeder works 100% of the time, while Read You fails in multiple cases)

Also see https://validator.w3.org/feed/ (https://github.com/w3c/feedvalidator)
@aerotoad Please do have a look on them.

[travisfw]

Not sure why you're even worrying about servers because an RSS URL includes the "authority" part, so each has its own server.

You mean for search? You could use a generic search engine and filter results. I looked into duckduckgo and google, and I can't find a way to search for just RSS. I would hope that some search engine would allow filtering results to just the application/rss+xml mime type… but you could use a search engine and just include the term "feed"?

Still WRT this issue, you shouldn't need a server-side component (except the obvious domain of the RSS URL).

[aerotoad]

@travisfw Yes, the main issue is discovering and adding new feeds without having the feed url beforehand without some server for indexing, storing and serving feed search results the entire "Discovery" section of the app wouldn't work. I'll look into using some generic search engine and the quality of those results as well as the possible cost that it would have. Ideally I'd like to move away from the feedly API without losing any functionality, so I'll keep looking into possible solutions.

[travisfw]

I hear ya, and there must be a good alternative to feedly somewhere. But wrt THIS issue, maybe you could inspect the text entered into the field to see if it's a URL? If it's an RSS URL, just add it, and don't hit any other endpoint except a GET to that RSS resource?

[aerotoad]

It might seem as simple as that but it isnt. See, since the entire thing was originally built around the API responses feedly sends, to be able to support custom feed url without feedly's intervention first I'd need to add some XML parser to be able to read and extract all relevant information from the RSS response, then format it to be compatible with the JSON data format already stored by the app and also extract the raw html from it to be able to present the news in the entry view. Making a GET to get the body of the feed is just the first step on a much more complex issue (turning the response into something usable and backwards compatible)

[akolaarthurali]

I am waiting ✋️ to see how intelligently and conceptually it will work out. I am sure given your earlier input in constructing this really good discover app. You will be able to maneuver this as well.

I must confuse I have really liked how you have intelligently designed app to discover as many news feeds as possible. The UI and UX is really good 👍