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Cfeed (formerly CRR) is purely textual, console based RSS and Atom feed reader for Windows platform built in C#. It uses System.ServiceModel.Syndication library to read RSS 1.0, 2.0 or Atom 1.0 feeds.

HTML to Text rendering is done using HtmlAgilityPack

This project was inspierd by wonderfull Newsbeuter and a lack of similar tool for Windows platform.

Before running cfeed for the first time, you have to do some basic configuration. The only required configuration consists of list of URL's of RSS or Atom feeds. See settings.conf for example configuration. You can remove everything except the Feeds section. The only required property in Feeds colleciton is FeedUrl. Minimal settings.conf looks like this:

{
    Feeds: [{FeedUrl: "http://feeds.newscientist.com/"}]
}

Any setting in embedded default.conf can be overridden in settings.conf placed in application root folder.

More about config in next section.

After setting feeds in config file, you can run the app. Application will list configured feeds, and refresh the feed contents in background.

By default, you can open the feed with Spacebar or Enter key. This will list articles in the feed. Hitting same kays again will open selected feed item. Use Arrow Up, Arrow Down, Page Up and Page Down keys to navigate lists. By default return to previous screen using Backspace or Escape (can be configured differently in settings).

Hitting R while on list of feeds will refresh selected feed, and Control+R will refresh all feeds.

When on article, article content will be loaded on background. Hitting O will open selected article in default (or configured) browser. Full list of actions and hotkeys can be found in Configuration section.

Cfeed uses json files to store app configuration. Embedded default.conf provides default settings when no other config file is present. User setting are stored in settings.conf. Any setting in latter file overrides default settings. The settings.conf also includes list of feeds, but there are plans to move this to separate feedlist.conf file.

Structure of JSON object:

• Feeds - list of feeds and feed related settings (url, filters, custom label)
• UI - look & feel of application, layout of views
• Shortcuts - key bindings
• App - app related settings, like external browser etc.

Feeds

Basic setting.conf can look like this:

{
    Feeds: [
    {
        #URL of RSS otr Atom feed
        FeedUrl: "http://feeds.newscientist.com/",
        #XPath selector to select single node as root of article. Filters (see below) are applied after Select
        Select: "//html",
        #Define filters for html id's and classes. Elements from those classes will be ignored when converting html to text. use '.' prefix for classes and # for id's.
        Filters: ["#main-nav", "#breadcrumbs", ".masthead-container",".signpost", ".entry-meta", ".footer", "#mpu-sidebar", ".leaderboard-container", "#registration-barrier", ".entry-form g50"],
        #Custom title to override default feed title
        Title: "New Scientist - Home Custom",
        #Tags can be used to categorize feeds and articles. Thas can be used in query to filter on
        Tags: ["Science"],
        #If uncommented, feed will be hidden and only accessible via FeedQuery
        #Hidden: true,
        #If set to true, reloads feed automatically
        AutoReload: true,
        #If AutoReload is set to true, this defines number of seconds after which feed will be automatically reloaded. Default is 30.
        ReloadInterval: 30
    }
}

Only FeedUrl is required, other settings are optional. A new feature is Select that selects root node of document. Select makes filters much simpler, as you can first select root, and then "filter" out unwanted content from root node, like page navigation, links, registration forms etc. To use filter, look source of the page that you want to display. Prepend all "class" attributes of html elements you want to filter out with ".", and all "id" attributes of html elements with "#". Any content inside filtered elements will not be rendered. Title can be used to display custom title of feed, instead of the one defined by feed itself.

Dynamic Feeds

Yay! It is now supported to filter articles in online feed by defining FeedQuery, or create dynamic feed by specifying FeedQuery without the FeedUrl. Latter will search all downloaded articles, and crete "virtual" feed from search results.

Example: Dynamic feed

{ 
    #Dynamic feed - find all articles with word 'Mars' in Title or Summary.
    FeedQuery: "(Summary.Contains(\"Mars\") || Title.Contains(\"Mars\"))",
    Title: "Dynamic feed - Mars"
}

Example: Filtered feed

{ 
    #Filtered feed - find all articles in newscientist feed with word 'Mars' in Title or Summary
    FeedUrl: "http://feeds.newscientist.com/",
    FeedQuery: "(Summary.Contains(\"Mars\") || Title.Contains(\"Mars\"))",
    Title: "Online feed - Mars"
}

Example: Using Select

{ 
    FeedUrl: "http://rss.slashdot.org/slashdot/slashdot",
    #Select root node first
    Select: "//div[@id='firehoselist']",
    #Filter out unwanted links
    Filters: [".view_mode", "#newa2footerv2"]
}

FeedQuery syntax

FeedQuery string is interpreted using System.Linq.Dynamic.DynamicQueryable class. Supported entities to use in query are listed in following table:

UI

UI section of config can be used to customize look and feel of application.

TODO: In the future, I plan to change how UI is configured, by providing layout template in for each displayed UI element.

UI.Strings

Formatting for various UI elements. Formatting string must start by % followed by specific identifier, dependant on type of element displayed. To define column width use following format: "%i:3r" is replaced by Index, right aligned and padded to 3 characters width. To align string left, use "l", e.g. "%i:3l".

Following tables defines identifiers for each UI.String element

Replacement strings for ApplicationTitleFormat:

Replacement strings for FeedListFormat and FeedTitleFormat:

Replacement strings for ArticleListFormat and ArticleTitleFormat:

UI.Colors

Colors section can be used to define custom color "theme" for the app. Colors for UI elements are defined in Layout section. For a valid list of color names see this list on MSDN.

UI.Layout

Defines general layout of the application. Layout must containg following items:

Each elemant can contain Width, Height, and list of controls that will be generated for view. See default.conf for example.

Shortcuts

Defines keyboard keys and modifiers combination that trigger particular action. For a valid list of keys see this link. For a valid list of modifiers see here. Some key combinations are used by windows itself if you enable advanced console features. Avoid those combinations.

Each Key and Modifiers object can be an array. If you define more than one Key, pressing any of the keys will trigger action. If you define more than one modifier, all modifiers have to be pressed. For example, definiton {Key: ["S,D"], Modifiers: ["Control", "Alt"] } means it will trigger on CTRL+ALT+S or CTRL+ALT+D.

Following keys are set by default on picklists and text area. They are not configurable, however they are fairly obvious.

Other settings

Replacement strings for SavedFileName. File name will be sanitized. Absolute, relative and network locations are supported, just make sure you have write access to defined location.

cfeed [-h] [-d <database>] [-r <true|false>] [-o <opml uri/path>]

 -h  Show help.
 -d  Database; Override default db location.
 -r  Refresh; Whether to refresh all feeds on first load.
 -o  Import OPML feed list

OPML support is limited to reading list of feeds from opml file and displaying them. They are not exported or added to .conf file, this has to be done manually. However read state is tracked for articles in those feeds, and they can also be selected using dynamic query.

Big thanks to awesome newsbeuter for inspiration. This app is built from scratch, and does not use any portion of newsbeuter code. This is open source project to provide windows users with purely textual Atom and RSS feed reader.

• This app uses JsonConfig to parse configuration files.
• HtmlAgilityPack is used to parse article content.
• LiteDb is used for local storage of article metadata.

• Write unit tests
• Add more features
• Get some rest

1. Fork it!
2. Create your feature branch: git checkout -b my-new-feature
3. Commit your changes: git commit -am 'Add some feature'
4. Push to the branch: git push origin my-new-feature
5. Submit a pull request :D

MIT