This is a lightweight, customizable "bot" script to harvest RSS/Atom feeds and re-publish them to the Diaspora social network. It is posted here without warranty, for public use.

v2 is a complete re-write of the original pod_feeder script which was written (poorly) in perl and is no longer supported. Migrating to this version is recommended.

Installation

pod_feeder_v2 requires python3. You can easily install the dependencies with pip:

System-wide

sudo pip3 install pod-feeder-v2

Individual user

pip3 install --user pod-feeder-v2

When installing as a non-privilegd user, make sure you have ~/.local/bin in your $PATH

Migrating from pod_feeder "classic"

pod_feeder_v2's database schema is backward-compatible with the original, so you can point the script at your existing feed.db file (or whatever yours is called).
The --title-tags and --url-tags arguments have not been carried forward because in practice they generally create lots of spurious tags, and the 'stop words' feature is difficult to implement. --user-agent is not currently implemented because the feedparser library does not support it.
Several new options, --summary, --debug, and --quiet have been added.

Usage

This script is intended to be run as a cron job, which might look something like this:

@hourly pod-feeder --feed-id myfeed --feed-url http://example.com/feeds/rss --pod-url https://diaspora.example.com --username user --password ******** --quiet

There is also a database cleaner script that you can run as often as you like to keep your database size under control:

@weekly pf-clean-db feed.db > /dev/null 2>&1


    usage: pod-feeder [-h] [--aspect-id ASPECT_ID] [--auto-tag AUTO_TAG]
                      [--category-tags] [--database DATABASE] [--embed-image]
                      --feed-id FEED_ID --feed-url FEED_URL
                      [--ignore-tag IGNORE_TAG] [--limit LIMIT] [--no-branding]
                      --pod-url POD_URL [--post-raw-link] [--timeout TIMEOUT]
                      [--username USERNAME] [--via VIA] [--summary | --full]
                      (--password PASSWORD | --fetch-only) [--debug | --quiet]


    optional arguments:
      -h, --help            show this help message and exit
      --aspect-id ASPECT_ID
                            Numerical aspect ID to share with. May be specified
                            multiple times (default: 'public')
      --auto-tag AUTO_TAG   Hashtags to add to all posts. May be specified
                            multiple times
      --category-tags       Automatically hashtagify RSS item 'categories' if any
      --database DATABASE   The file to store feed data (default: 'feed.db')
      --embed-image         Embed an image in the post if a link exists
      --feed-id FEED_ID     An arbitrary label for this feed
      --feed-url FEED_URL   The feed URL
      --ignore-tag IGNORE_TAG
                            Hashtag to filter out. May be specified multiple times
      --limit LIMIT         Only post n items per script run, to prevent post-
                            spamming
      --no-branding         Do not include 'via pod_feeder_v2' footer to posts
      --pod-url POD_URL     The pod URL
      --post-raw-link       Post the raw link instead of hyperlinking the article
                            title
      --timeout TIMEOUT     How many hours to keep re-trying failed posts (default
                            72)
      --username USERNAME   The D* login username
      --via VIA             Sets the 'posted via' footer text (default:
                            'pod_feeder_v2')
      --summary             Post the summary text of the feed item
      --full, --body        Post the full text of the feed item
      --password PASSWORD   The D* user password
      --fetch-only          Don't publish to Diaspora, queue the new feed items
                            for later
      --debug               Show debugging output
      --quiet               Suppress normal output

A Note on YouTube Feeds

It is possible to publish a YouTube channel's feed, by using the following URL format:

https://www.youtube.com/feeds/videos.xml?channel_id=<channel id>