feed2email

RSS/Atom feed updates in your email

Why

I don't like having a separate application for feeds when I'm already checking my email. I also never read a thing when feeds are kept in a separate place.

feed2email was written primarily as a replacement of rss2email and aims to be simpler, faster, smaller and easier to use.

Installation

Install as a gem from RubyGems:

$ gem install feed2email

Configuration

Through a YAML file at ~/.feed2email/config.yml.

It is possible to send email via SMTP or an MTA. If config.yml contains options for both, feed2email will use SMTP.

Format

Each line in the configuration file contains a key-value pair. Each key-value pair is separated with a colon: foo: bar

Generic options

  • recipient (required) is the email address to send email to
  • send_delay (optional) is the number of seconds to wait between each email to avoid SMTP server throttling errors (default is 10; use 0 to turn off)

SMTP

  • smtp_host is the SMTP service hostname to connect to
  • smtp_port is the SMTP service port to connect to
  • smtp_user is the username of your email account
  • smtp_pass is the password of your email account (see the warning below)
  • smtp_tls (optional) controls TLS (default is true; can also be false)
  • smtp_auth (optional) controls the authentication method (default is login; can also be plain or cram_md5)

Warning: Unless it has correct restricted permissions, anyone with access in your system will be able to read config.yml and your password. To prevent this, feed2email will not run and complain if it detects the wrong permissions. You can set the correct permissions with chmod 600 ~/.feed2email/config.yml.

MTA

For this method you need to have an MTA with a Sendmail-compatible interface setup and working in your system. I suggest msmtp or Postfix.

  • sendmail_path (optional) is the path to the Sendmail binary (default is /usr/sbin/sendmail)

Use

Create ~/.feed2email/feeds.yml and add the address of each feed you want to subscribe to, prefixed with a dash and a space.

Then run it:

$ feed2email

When run for the first time, feed2email enters "dry run" mode and exits almost immediately. During dry run mode:

  • No feeds are fetched and, thus, no email is sent (existing feed entries are considered already seen)
  • ~/.feed2email/state.yml is created containing the timestamp of when each feed was last fetched

If you want to receive existing entries from a specific feed, you can manually alter the timestamp for that feed in state.yml to a value in the past. Next time you run feed2email, all entries published past that timestamp will be sent with email.

You can use cron to run feed2email automatically e.g. once every hour.

License

Licensed under the MIT license (see LICENSE.txt).

Author

Aggelos Orfanakos, http://agorf.gr/