Fediverse @lemmy.world PhilipTheBucket @ponder.cat 2mo ago

Add any RSS feed to any Lemmy community

Hello everyone!

If you moderate a community, and you want to get automatic posts from an RSS feed, now you can. It can be used for release posts for a FOSS project, infrequent blog postings that are relevant to your community, or things like that.

To do this, send a private message to bot@rss.ponder.cat. The commands are:

/add {rss_url} {community}@{instance} - Add a new RSS feed
/delete {rss_url} {community}@{instance} - Unlink an existing RSS feed from the community
/list {community}@{instance} - List all feeds for a community
/help - Show this help message

Please don't spam. You need to be a moderator of the community to modify its feed settings, but it's still possible for moderators to spam the rest of their instance with nonsense. Be a good Lemmy. If you'd like an RSS feed that's going to post a lot, and you want to separate it into a place where it won't invade the rest of Lemmy in a flood, send me a message and we can work it out.

Enjoy! Have fun.

6 comments

Really great tool, thanks! A few questions...

In the commands, will {instance} always be rss.ponder.cat?

Is the full process:

create account on rss.ponder cat

create community using new account

send message to add rss feed(s)

Or do you make the communities and then we add feeds to them?

Does each message need to have only one command?
- You can add them to any community :) I added a low volume feed to !medicine@lemmy.ca as a test, and you can see the recent post it made
  
  You can also chain multiple commands in one message iirc
  
  I'm looking around for other feeds that don't have too much spam. Some ideas include
  
  updates on new releases for FOSS projects
  
  the patients feed for !marinemammalrescue@lemmy.ca, but the feed itself is down currently
- Really great tool, thanks!
  
  Thank you!
  
  In the commands, will {instance} always be rss.ponder.cat?
  
  create account on rss.ponder cat
  
  Or do you make the communities and then we add feeds to them?
  
  No to all. This particular tool is only for communities on other instances. It doesn't interact with the big feeds on rss.ponder.cat.
  
  rss.ponder.cat is for the all-RSS-post communities that I've been making. A lot of them will be pretty heavy on their posting, so some people may prefer to block the whole thing wholesale. I can add communities if people request it, but it's something I want to be a little bit careful with, so as not to create too much spam.
  
  This new tool is designed to add RSS feeds to communities outside of ponder.cat. Something like releases of a FOSS project, weather updates for a city, things like that. The moderators of those communities can use the bot to do whatever they want within their communities, without having to involve me.
  
  Does each message need to have only one command?
  
  No, you can issue multiple commands. It should work fine. Of course if it gives you any issues, you can let me know.
  
  Edit: Otter already answered, I just didn't see it. I'm leaving it for posterity, though.
Sounds like a really useful project. do you have a link to the source code? (hopefully it is open source) , or a github/codeberg/whatever link? (so that people could easily submit issues). i can add it to awesome lemmy (or you can do it, its fairly easy).
Oh, right. I was confused by this before, but I understand it now after reading yours and Otters answers, and seeing https://rss.ponder.cat/c/medicine@lemmy.ca - the bot posts to its local version of a remote community, and it federates out like it it normally does.

Am I right in assuming that - API wise - the bot only interacts with ponder.cat, and doesn't make calls to the remote instance? (I'm wondering if there's any barriers to it operating with communities that aren't on a Lemmy instance).

Does the bot resolve the human first, check what they moderate, and then resolve the community if they moderate it, or just always resolve the community, and then compare its moderators with who made the request? If its the latter, this could be a way for bad actors to crowbar a community onto your instance (assuming it doesn't purge it if things don't match up, of course).

What would have happened if Otter had sent /add https://lemmy.ca/feeds/c/medicine.xml medicine@lemmy.ca ? Would this be like that time when someone put 'google' into google.com, and the Internet blew up?

Thanks.
- Am I right in assuming that - API wise - the bot only interacts with ponder.cat, and doesn’t make calls to the remote instance? (I’m wondering if there’s any barriers to it operating with communities that aren’t on a Lemmy instance).
  
  Yes, that's right. It should work fine on a non-Lemmy instance.
  
  Does the bot resolve the human first, check what they moderate, and then resolve the community if they moderate it, or just always resolve the community, and then compare its moderators with who made the request? If its the latter, this could be a way for bad actors to crowbar a community onto your instance (assuming it doesn’t purge it if things don’t match up, of course).
  
  It's the latter. I think it's okay. The same thing can happen on any instance where someone can search for a community from any other instance.
  
  What would have happened if Otter had sent /add https://lemmy.ca/feeds/c/medicine.xml medicine@lemmy.ca ? Would this be like that time when someone put ‘google’ into google.com, and the Internet blew up?
  
  It's limited to one posting every 5 minutes per feed, so the damage would be limited, but you're right that it would enter an infinite loop and post once every five minutes until someone put a stop to it.

6 comments