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| author | Steph Enders <steph@senders.io> | 2024-03-07 15:17:29 -0500 |
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| committer | Steph Enders <steph@senders.io> | 2024-03-07 15:17:29 -0500 |
| commit | 1f689fd039533801842ae241671f2437ddbe0044 (patch) | |
| tree | 50d3db88f2c7e676d6679696a101e6ae2b25448f /posts/how-i-generate-my-rss-feed.html | |
| parent | 80f5dacf988b1cddd04eea6c4a6f70b165376764 (diff) | |
Copy old files and update build.sh to generate it all!
This is a huge messy commit but :) sue me. I'm not at work I can do
git badly for once!
Diffstat (limited to 'posts/how-i-generate-my-rss-feed.html')
| -rw-r--r-- | posts/how-i-generate-my-rss-feed.html | 146 |
1 files changed, 146 insertions, 0 deletions
diff --git a/posts/how-i-generate-my-rss-feed.html b/posts/how-i-generate-my-rss-feed.html new file mode 100644 index 0000000..752bb0c --- /dev/null +++ b/posts/how-i-generate-my-rss-feed.html @@ -0,0 +1,146 @@ + +--post-date: 2023-01-06 +--type: blog + <article> + <h1>How I Generate My RSS Feed</h1> + <p>I only just now started supplying an RSS feed to you fine people! You + can subscribe to it at <a href= + "/blog/feed.rss">www.senders.io/blog/feed.rss</a>!</p> + <p>I decided rather than manually generating the file contents I’d hook + into my pre-existing publish scripts to be able to generate the RSS + file.</p> + <h2>Publishing blog posts - shell scripts ftw</h2> + <p>In <a href="/blog/2022-11-06/">My Markdown -> HTML Setup</a> I + touch on how I publish my markdown files into HTML for this blog. But + what I don’t <em>really</em> touch on is the shell scripts that tie the + whole process together.</p> + <p>What I have is two, now three, scripts that feed the whole + process:</p> + <ol> + <li><code>publish-blog.sh</code> - the main script</li> + <li><code>compile-md.sh</code> - generates the HTML output</li> + <li><code>update-feed.sh</code> - generates/appends the RSS feed</li> + </ol> + <p>The <code>update-feed.sh</code> script is the new one I just + added.</p> + <p><code>publish-blog.sh</code> is the primary interface, I supply the + date of the post and the path to the md file and that calls compile and + update to automate the entire process.</p> + <p>Without going into TOO much detail you can view the latest versions of + the scripts at <a rel="external noopener noreferrer" + target="_blank" + href= + "https://git.senders.io/senders/senders-io/tree/">git.senders.io/senders/senders-io/tree/</a>.</p> + <p>But the gist of the scripts is I parse out the necessary details, + find/replace some tokens in template files I have setup for headers and + footers, and concat the outputs into the final output HTML files, and now + RSS feed.</p> + <h3>update-feed.sh</h3> + <p>Source File: <a rel="external noopener noreferrer" + target="_blank" + href= + "https://git.senders.io/senders/senders-io/tree/update-feed.sh">git.senders.io/senders/senders-io/tree/update-feed.sh</a></p> + <p>This script is pretty interesting. I didn’t want to deal with any XML + parsers and libraries to just maintain a proper XML rss file and push + items into the tree. Rather, I just follow a similar setup to my markdown + generation. I leverage some temporary files to hold the contents, a + static temp file for the previously generated content, and at the end + swap the temp file with the real file.</p> + <p>I take in an input of the publish date (this is the date from the + publish script), the title, and the HTML file path. These are all already + variables in the publish script, but also something I can manually supply + if I need to publish an older article, or something I wrote directly in + HTML.</p> + <p>The core of the script is found here:</p> + <pre><code>PUBDATE=$(date -d "$1" -R) +TITLE=$2 +FILE_PATH=$3 +PERMALINK=$(echo "${FILE_PATH}" | sed -e "s,${TKN_URL_STRIP},${URL_PREFIX},g") +LINK=$(echo "${PERMALINK}" | sed -e "s,${TKN_INDEX_STRIP},,g") + +# Generate TMP FEED File Header + +cat -s $FILE_RSS_HEADER > $FILE_TMP_FEED +sed -i -E "s/${TKN_BUILDDATE}/${BUILDDATE}/g" $FILE_TMP_FEED +sed -i -E "s/${TKN_PUBDATE}/${PUBDATE}/g" $FILE_TMP_FEED + +# Generate TMP Item File + +cat -s $FILE_RSS_ITEM_HEADER > $FILE_TMP_ITEM +sed -i -E "s~${TKN_TITLE}~${TITLE}~g" $FILE_TMP_ITEM +sed -i -E "s/${TKN_PUBDATE}/${PUBDATE}/g" $FILE_TMP_ITEM +sed -i -E "s,${TKN_PERMALINK},${PERMALINK},g" $FILE_TMP_ITEM +sed -i -E "s,${TKN_LINK},${LINK},g" $FILE_TMP_ITEM +sed -n "/<article>/,/<\/article>/p" $FILE_PATH >> $FILE_TMP_ITEM +cat -s $FILE_RSS_ITEM_FOOTER >> $FILE_TMP_ITEM + +# Prepend Item to items list and overwrite items file w/ prepended item +## In order to "prepend" the item (so it's on top of the others) +## We need to concat the tmp item file with the existing list, then +## we can push the contents over the existing file +## We use cat -s to squeeze the blank lines +cat -s $FILE_ITEM_OUTPUT >> $FILE_TMP_ITEM +cat -s $FILE_TMP_ITEM > $FILE_ITEM_OUTPUT + +# Push items to TMP FEED +cat -s $FILE_ITEM_OUTPUT >> $FILE_TMP_FEED + +# Push RSS footer to TMP FEED +cat -s $FILE_RSS_FOOTER >> $FILE_TMP_FEED +echo $FILE_TMP_FEED + +# Publish feed +cat -s $FILE_TMP_FEED > $FILE_RSS_OUTPUT + +echo "Finished generating feed" +</code></pre> + <p>Some key takeaways are:</p> + <ol> + <li>sed lets you do regex with delimiters that AREN’T <code>/</code> so + you can substitute something that shouldn’t actually ever show up in + your regex. For me that is <code>~</code>.</li> + <li>I always forget you can use sed to extract between tokens - which + is how I get the CDATA for the RSS: <code>sed -n + "/<article>/,/<\/article>/p"</code></li> + <li><code>mktemp</code> is really REALLY useful - and I feel is under + utilized in shellscripting</li> + </ol> + <p>The obvious cracks are:</p> + <ol> + <li>I rely SO much on <code>sed</code> that it’s almost certainly going + to break</li> + <li>I don’t have much other flag control to do partial generation - so + if I need to do something either starting partway through or not finish + the full process, I don’t have that.</li> + <li>Sometimes things can break silently and it will go through, there + is no verification or like manual checking along the way before + publishing the feed.rss</li> + </ol> + <p>The final two can easily be managed by writing the feed to a location + that isn’t a temp file and I can manually do the <code>cat -s + $FILE_TMP_FEED > www/blog/feed.rss</code> myself after I check it + over.</p> + <p>But for now I’ll see if I ever have to redo it. I don’t think anyone + will actually sub to this so I don’t really need to care that much if I + amend the feed.</p> + <h2>Where to put the feed URL</h2> + <p>I never intended to provide an RSS feed. I doubt anyone but me reads + this, and from my previous experience with gemini feed generation was a + bit of a headache.</p> + <p>A quick aside: I really only decided thanks to Mastodon. I was + thinking during the Twitter meltdown “what if twitter but RSS” (I know + super unique idea). But basically like a true “microblog”. And some OSS + tools to publish your blog. This got me reading the RSS spec and looking + into it more - which then lead me down the using the RSS readers more (in + conjunction with gemini, and Cortex podcast talking about using RSS + more).</p> + <p>But I’ve decided to just put the RSS feed in the blog index, on my + homepage, and that’s it. I don’t need it permanently in the header.</p> + <h2>Conclusion</h2> + <p>I didn’t have much to share here, it doesn’t make too much sense to + write a big post on what can be explained better by just checking out the + shell scripts in my git source. The code speaks better than I ever + could.</p> + <p>I really, really like shell scripting.</p> + </article> + |