Feedlynx

Feedlynx helps you collect links to read or watch later. It generates an RSS feed of the links you collect and runs on BSD, Linux, macOS, Windows, and more.

Feedlynx manages an Atom feed on disk. Each time a request to add a link is received the page at the URL is fetched to determine a title and description. This information is then used to add a new entry to the feed. If the link is from YouTube then an embed for the video is generated.

Install

Pre-compiled Binary

Pre-compiled binaries are available for a number of platforms:

• FreeBSD 13+ amd64
• Linux x86_64
• Linux aarch64
• MacOS Universal
• Windows x86_64

Check the latest release for download links.

From Source

See Build From Source below.

Integrations

Browser Extensions

See https://github.com/wezm/feedlynx-ext for browser extensions.

Apple Shortcuts (iOS, iPadOS, macOS)

This Shortcut allows you add links to Feedlynx using the system share sheet.

https://www.icloud.com/shortcuts/1629cde707ca432ead72403ffd9f4dbc

Usage

USAGE:
    feedlynx [OPTIONS] FEED_PATH

OPTIONS:
    -h, --help
            Prints this help information

    -V, --version
            Prints version information

ENVIRONMENT:

    Required:

        FEEDLYNX_PRIVATE_TOKEN
            Used to authenticate requests to add a new link.

        FEEDLYNX_FEED_TOKEN
            Used in the path to the generated feed.

    Optional:

        FEEDLYNX_ADDRESS
            The address to serve on, default `127.0.0.1`.

        FEEDLYNX_PORT
            The port to serve on, default `8001`.

        FEEDLYNX_LOG
            Controls the log level and filtering.

Example:

feedlynx path/to/feed.xml

Feedlynx requires two environment variables to be set:

• FEEDLYNX_PRIVATE_TOKEN used to authenticate requests to add a new link.
• FEEDLYNX_FEED_TOKEN used in the path to the generated feed.

Both of these tokens must be at least 32 characters long and hard to guess. Suitable values can be generated with feedlynx gen-token, which will print a randomly generated token.

The following environment variables may optionally be set:

• FEEDLYNX_ADDRESS —- the address to serve on, default 127.0.0.1.
• FEEDLYNX_PORT —- the port to serve on, default 8001.
• FEEDLYNX_LOG — controls the log level and filtering.

Run feedlynx with the path to the feed file to start the server. If the file does not exist it will be created. When the server starts the path on the server for the feed is printed. This is what you would use to subscribe to the feed in your feed reader.

Feed Trimming

When a new link is added links older than 30 days are considered for removal. Feedlynx will retain up to 50 entries. Entries older than 30 days in excess of 50 entries will be removed, oldest first.

The limit was added to stop the feed growing forever since there is no way for Feedlynx to know when an item has been read. RSS readers need to download and process the whole feed whenever there are new items, so imposing a cap helps limit the size and scope of that work.

Example

FEEDLYNX_PRIVATE_TOKEN=ExampleExampleExampleExample1234 \
FEEDLYNX_FEED_TOKEN=FeedFeedFeedFeedFeedFeedFeedFeed \
feedlynx feed.xml
[2024-06-24T08:52:11Z INFO  feedlynx] HTTP server running on: http://127.0.0.1:8001
[2024-06-24T08:52:11Z INFO  feedlynx::server] feed available at /feed/FeedFeedFeedFeedFeedFeedFeedFeed

If this instance of Feedlynx was hosted at example.com the URL of the feed would be https://example.com/feed/FeedFeedFeedFeedFeedFeedFeedFeed.

In a Windows PowerShell terminal the above example would look something like this:

powershell -Command { $env:FEEDLYNX_PRIVATE_TOKEN="ExampleExampleExampleExample1234"; $env:FEEDLYNX_FEED_TOKEN="FeedFeedFeedFeedFeedFeedFeedFeed"; feedlynx.exe feed.xml }

Logging

Logging is controlled with the FEEDLYNX_LOG environment variable. The log levels from least verbose to most verbose are:

• off (no logs)
• error
• warn
• info
• debug
• trace

The default log level is info. To change the log level to debug use FEEDLYNX_LOG=debug. The FEEDLYNX_LOG variable also supports filtering. For example to only show trace messages from feedlynx (and not some of the libraries it uses) you would specify: FEEDLYNX_LOG=trace=feedlynx. For more details refer to the env_logger documentation.

At the debug level Feedlynx will print a web-server styled line for each request received.

[2024-06-24T07:48:39Z DEBUG feedlynx::server] 127.0.0.1:50202 "GET /feed/FeedFeedFeedFeedFeedFeedFeedFeed" 200 "curl/8.8.0"

This includes the remote address, request method and path, response status code, and client user agent.

API

The server exposes three end-points:

• GET / — shows a brief page about the Feedlynx server.
• POST /add — add a new link. Requires a body in application/x-www-form-urlencoded (web form) format.
  • Fields:
    • url (required) — the link to add.
    • token (required) — the value of FEEDLYNX_PRIVATE_TOKEN.
    • title (optional) — the title of the link.
• POST /info — retrieve informatin about the server. Requires a body in application/x-www-form-urlencoded (web form) format.
  • Fields:
    • token (required) — the value of FEEDLYNX_PRIVATE_TOKEN.
  • Response:
    • JSON object. Keys:
      • status: "ok" or "error".
      • version: present when status is "ok". Contains server version.
      • message: present when status is "error". Contain an error message.
• GET /feed/<FEEDLYNX_FEED_TOKEN> — the generated feed. Use this to subscribe to the feed in your feed reader.

cURL Example

The following cURL command will add https://github.com/wezm/feedlynx to the Feedlynx feed:

curl -d 'url=https://github.com/wezm/feedlynx' \
     -d 'token=ExampleExampleExampleExample1234' \
     http://localhost:8001/add

Deployment

It's recommended that Feedlynx be deployed behind a reverse proxy such as nginx that can provide HTTPS termination. Feedlynx assumes that it is deployed to a dedicated domain or sub-domain. E.g. https://feedlynx.example.com/.

Build from Source

Minimum Supported Rust Version: 1.79.0

Feedlynx is implemented in Rust. See the Rust website for instructions on installing the toolchain.

From Git Checkout or Release Tarball

Build the binary with:

cargo build --release --locked

The binary will be in target/release/feedlynx.

From crates.io

cargo install feedlynx

Compile-time Options (Cargo Features)

Feedlynx supports the following compile-time options:

• rust-tls (default): use the rust-tls crate for handling TLS connections.
• native-tls: use the native-tls crate for handling TLS connections. This might be a better option when building on Windows.

To build with native-tls invoke Cargo as follows:

cargo build --release --locked --no-default-features --features native-tls

If packaging Feedlynx for an operating system registry it might make sense to use native-tls. On Linux and BSD systems that adds a dependency on OpenSSL.

Using a Container (Docker or Podman)

A Dockerfile is included in the repository. A lightweight container image can be built like this:

docker build -t feedlynx .

The container expects the path to the feed in /data, so we can use a volume mount to have persistent storage:

docker run -p 127.0.0.1:8001:8001 -v ./data:/data \
  -e FEEDLYNX_PRIVATE_TOKEN=ExampleExampleExampleExample1234 \
  -e FEEDLYNX_FEED_TOKEN=FeedFeedFeedFeedFeedFeedFeedFeed /data/feed.xml

The application then can be accessed at http://localhost:8001 like it would run without a container. If using Podman, just replace the usage of the docker command with podman.

Credits

Feedlynx incorporates code from the following projects under the terms of the Apache 2.0 licence:

• base62 generation code from nano-id.
• Random number generation from rustc via matklad and orhun
• UNIX signal handling from habitat.
• Windows signal handling from ctrlc.

The adorable Feedlynx logo was drawn by @DiDoesDigital.

Licence

This project is dual licenced under either of:

• Apache License, Version 2.0 (LICENSE-APACHE)
• MIT license (LICENSE-MIT)

at your option.