nelsonxb / RSSTranslator

Create RSS feeds of Imgur users

RSSTranslator - Build RSS feeds from REST APIs

We all use quite a few sites that we would like to receive updates from. There exists a way of viewing feeds from any site that supports it in one handy location. This way is called RSS (there also exists Atom, which is similar - if I understand correctly, just a slightly different file format). However, a lot of sites don't seem to like to create RSS feeds for us, so we are constantly having to re-open many sites frequently to check for updates. If only there were a better way, right?

Well, as it turns out, many of these sites do provide a REST API that does list updates. While they don't all conform to a standard like RSS does, an API does make it possible to generate an RSS feed.

Enter RSSTranslator. This web app is designed to generate RSS feeds from REST APIs. It currently supports:

Feed description	Endpoint
Imgur gallery submissions	/feed/imgur/gallery-subs/{imgur_username}.rss

The format for feeds is /feed/{app_name}/{feed_type}/{feed_descriptor}.rss, where:

• {app_name}: The name of the app that provides the standard service. Some examples could be imgur, twitter, or youtube.
• {feed_type}: A short name describing the point of this feed. Just in case we need multiple feed types for each app.
• {feed_descriptor}: Uniquely identifies the actual RSS feed. This is usually the username of someone (e.g. the app username or whoever we are following).

You can currently find the app on Heroku at http://rss-translator.herokuapp.com. Be aware that it is on the lowest hosting level, so it can't handle high traffic. There is currently no index page.

Running

1. Get API keys
2. Create a virtual environment (recommended)
   • pip install virtualenv
   • virtualenv env
     • You may need to specify -p python3
3. Activate virtualenv (only if you did step 1)
   • . env/bin/activate
4. Install dependencies
   • pip install -r requirements.txt
5. Run development server locally
   • python dev_debug_server.py
6. Run production server locally (requires Heroku toolbelt)
   • foreman start

Roadmap

• Create a dynamic RSS feed of recent submitted posts using Imgur API
• Genericize to provide extensibility to create more feed types
• Add a couple more feed types
  • Twitter 'following' feeds
  • Maybe YouTube subscriptions feeds?
• Create a simple way to view said feeds in the browser (i.e. a UI)
• Provide an API to easily add simple feeds