Feedr - Terminal RSS Feed Reader 📰

Feedr is a feature-rich terminal-based RSS feed reader written in Rust. It provides a clean, intuitive TUI interface for managing and reading RSS feeds with elegant visuals and smooth keyboard navigation.

Features

• Dashboard View: See the latest articles across all your feeds
• Feed Management: Subscribe to and organize multiple RSS feeds
• Rich Content Display: Beautiful formatting of articles with HTML-to-text conversion
• Smart Search: Quickly find content across all your feeds
• Browser Integration: Open articles in your default browser
• Background Refresh: Automatic feed updates with configurable intervals and smart rate limiting
• Rate Limiting: Prevents "too many requests" errors with per-domain request throttling (ideal for Reddit feeds)
• Configurable: Customize timeouts, UI behavior, and default feeds via TOML config file
• XDG Compliant: Follows standard directory specifications for configuration and data storage

Installation

Prerequisites

• Rust and Cargo (install from https://rustup.rs/)

Using Cargo Install (Recommended)

cargo install feedr

Build from Source

git clone https://github.com/bahdotsh/feedr.git
cd feedr
cargo build --release

The binary will be available at target/release/feedr.

Usage

Run the application:

feedr

Quick Start

1. When you open Feedr for the first time, press a to add a feed
2. Enter a valid RSS feed URL (e.g., https://news.ycombinator.com/rss)
3. Use arrow keys to navigate and Enter to view items
4. Press o to open the current article in your browser

Keyboard Controls

General Navigation

Dashboard View

Feed List View

Feed Items View

Item Detail View

Configuration

Feedr supports customization through a TOML configuration file that follows XDG Base Directory specifications.

Configuration File Location

• Linux/macOS: ~/.config/feedr/config.toml
• Windows: %APPDATA%\feedr\config.toml

The configuration file is automatically generated with default values on first run if it doesn't exist.

Available Settings

# Feedr Configuration File

[general]
max_dashboard_items = 100           # Maximum number of items shown on dashboard
auto_refresh_interval = 0           # Auto-refresh interval in seconds (0 = disabled)
refresh_enabled = false             # Enable automatic background refresh
refresh_rate_limit_delay = 2000     # Delay in milliseconds between requests to same domain

[network]
http_timeout = 15              # HTTP request timeout in seconds
user_agent = "Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; Feedr/1.0; +https://github.com/bahdotsh/feedr)"

[ui]
tick_rate = 100                # UI update rate in milliseconds
error_display_timeout = 3000   # Error message duration in milliseconds

# Optional: Define default feeds to load on first run
[[default_feeds]]
url = "https://example.com/feed.xml"
category = "News"

Configuration Options Explained

General Settings

• max_dashboard_items: Controls how many items are displayed on the dashboard (default: 100)
• auto_refresh_interval: Automatically refresh feeds at specified interval in seconds (0 disables auto-refresh)
• refresh_enabled: Master switch to enable/disable automatic background refresh (default: false)
• refresh_rate_limit_delay: Delay in milliseconds between requests to the same domain to prevent "too many requests" errors (default: 2000ms). This is especially useful for Reddit feeds and other rate-limited services.

Network Settings

• http_timeout: Timeout for HTTP requests when fetching feeds (useful for slow connections)
• user_agent: Custom User-Agent string for HTTP requests

UI Settings

• tick_rate: How frequently the UI updates in milliseconds (lower = more responsive, higher = less CPU usage)
• error_display_timeout: How long error messages are displayed in milliseconds

Background Refresh Example

To enable automatic refresh every 5 minutes with rate limiting:

[general]
refresh_enabled = true
auto_refresh_interval = 300  # 5 minutes
refresh_rate_limit_delay = 2000  # 2 seconds between requests to same domain

Note: Rate limiting groups feeds by domain and staggers requests to prevent hitting API limits. For example, if you have multiple Reddit feeds, they will be fetched with a 2-second delay between each request to avoid getting blocked.

Default Feeds

You can define feeds to be automatically loaded on first run:

[[default_feeds]]
url = "https://news.ycombinator.com/rss"
category = "Tech"

[[default_feeds]]
url = "https://example.com/feed.xml"
category = "News"

Data Storage

Feedr stores your bookmarks, categories, and read items in:

• Linux/macOS: ~/.local/share/feedr/feedr_data.json
• Windows: %LOCALAPPDATA%\feedr\feedr_data.json

Backwards Compatibility

Feedr automatically migrates data from older versions to the new XDG-compliant locations. Your existing data will be preserved and automatically moved to the correct location on first run.

Dependencies

• ratatui: Terminal UI framework
• crossterm: Terminal manipulation
• reqwest: HTTP client
• rss: RSS parsing
• html2text: HTML to text conversion
• chrono: Date and time handling
• serde: Serialization/deserialization

License

MIT

Contributing

Contributions are welcome! Please feel free to submit a Pull Request.

1. Fork the repository
2. Create your feature branch (git checkout -b feature/amazing-feature)
3. Commit your changes (git commit -m 'Add some amazing feature')
4. Push to the branch (git push origin feature/amazing-feature)
5. Open a Pull Request