RSS reader

This is RSS reader version 1.0.

rss_reader.py is a python script intended to get RSS feed from given source URL and write its content to standart output.

Please be carefull with redirecting output to files. In this case CPython implementation of Python interpreter will change encoding from UTF-8 to the system locale encoding (i.e. the ANSI codepage).

This script will try to install all required packages from PyPI with pip in the current environment.

Tests

To launch tests run

on Windows

python -m unittest tests.py

on Linux

python3 -m unittest tests.py

To check test coverage run

on Windows

python -m coverage run --source=rss_reader -m unittest tests.py
python -m coverage report -m

on Linux

python3 -m coverage run --source=rss_reader -m unittest tests.py
python3 -m coverage report -m

All specified above commands should be used when current directory is the directory with rss_reader.py

How to execute without installation

Before installation there are two ways to start RSS reader

1. Using module loading. Run from directory with rss_reader.py file the following command

   on Windows

   python -m rss_reader ...

   on Linux

   python3 -m rss_reader ...

2. Specifying the script file. Run from directory with rss_reader.py file the following command

   on Windows

   python rss_reader.py ...

   on Linux

   python3 rss_reader.py ...

Installation

To install the script as site-package to python environment run the following command

on Windows

python setup.py install

on Linux

python3 setup.py install

How to execute after installation

Before installation there are three ways to start RSS reader

1. Using module loading. Run from any directory

   on Windows

   python -m rss_reader ...

   on Linux

   python3 -m rss_reader ...

2. Specifying the script file. Run from directory with rss_reader.py file the following command

   on Windows

   python rss_reader.py ...

   on Linux

   python3 rss_reader.py ...

3. Using entry point. Run from any directory

   rss_reader ...

Command line format

usage: rss_reader.py [-h] [--version] [--json] [--verbose] [--limit LIMIT] [--date DATE] [--to-html HTML_DEST]
					 [--to-pdf PDF_DEST]
					 source

Pure Python command-line RSS reader.

positional arguments:
  source               RSS URL

optional arguments:
  -h, --help           show this help message and exit
  --version            Print version info
  --json               Print result as JSON in stdout
  --verbose            Outputs verbose status messages
  --limit LIMIT        Limit news topics if this parameter provided
  --date DATE          Get from cache news that was published after specified date (date should be specified in format
					   YYYYmmdd, for example --date 20191020)
  --to-html HTML_DEST  Store feed in HTML as specified file
  --to-pdf PDF_DEST    Store feed in PDF as specified file

JSON representation

{
 "title": Title of the feed,
 "link": URL of feed,
 "description": Description of the feed,
 "items": [
  {
   "title": Item title if present,
   "pubDate": Publication date if present,
   "link": URL of the item if present,
   "description": Description of the item,
   "links": [
    [
     Link URL,
     Link type
    ],
    ...
   ]
  },
  ...
 ]
}

Cache storage format

News cache is stored in file rss_reader.cache in current working directory

Content of the cache file is serialized dictionary by module pickle.

Keys of the dictionary are URLs of retieved feeds.

For each key in dictionary appropriate value is the result of parsing feed with merged item lists.

Items from all retrieval of the same URL will be merged together in single list.

The result of parsing feed is the dictionary with following keys:

- `title` - title of the feed

- `link` - link to the feed

- `description` - description of the feed

- `items` - list of parsed items of the feed.

The result of parsing item of feed is dictionary with following keys:

- `title` - title of the item

- `pubDate` - publication date of the item

- `link` - link to resource related to the item

- `description` - description of the item

- `images` - dictionary of collected images (keys are URLs of images and values are their content as bytes object)

- `links` - a list of links collected for the item.

There is a tuple in the list links for each link collected for the item. The tuple has two elements:

- URL of the link

- type of the link. It may be just link if type is html or unknown.
Or it may be type part of MIME type of the resource.