RSSSyncer!

Intro:

RSS syncing server built with Sinatra and Redis (could be a redis cluster even) The goal is to allow for a simple system to setup syncing the read/unread/whatever status of news items in a timeline. The same system would work for things like instagram and twitter as well as RSS.

Usage:

User Authentication:

User authentication is handled by HTTP Basic Auth. New accounts can be created with the following request:

POST /signup Returns a 200 response code upon successful account creation.

• username: The desired username
• password: The desired user's password

I am doing nothing special to extra-encrypt the user's password because there is no reason to. No personal data is stored on the server, simply a user's reading habits. No email is necessary. All requests require authorization except / and /signup

Syncing subscriptions:

GET /subscriptions.(opml|json) Returns a list of all subscriptions in either JSON or OPML(OPML with folders) formats. This requests conditional GET requests, simply supply the UNIX timestamp from your last request. When a timestamp is supplied, the system only returns the subscriptions that have changed since the timestamp.

GET /subscriptions/.json Returns the information about a specific subscription or returns a 404 error when that subscription can't be found.

POST /subscriptions.json Creates a new subscription if you provide the necessary parameters:

• html_url (optional): The web page that the feed belongs to.
• feed_url: The address to the feed itself.
• name: The display name for the feed.
• type: The type of feed such as rss, atom, instagram, etc
• tags: The tags (or folder names) associated with the feed.

Returns the JSON representation of the subscription upon creation or a 400 error upon failure.

PUT /subscriptions/.json Updates a given subscription with the same parameters as the previous POST request.

DELETE /subscriptions/.json Deletes a subscription from the system.

Syncing items:

GET /items.json Returns a list of all items in either JSON or OPML(OPML with folders) formats. This requests conditional GET requests, simply supply the UNIX timestamp from your last request. When a timestamp is supplied, the system only returns the items that have changed since the timestamp.

GET /items/.json Returns the JSON representation of a stream item or a 404 error if that item does not exist.

POST /items.json This request updates the status for items. Parameters must be supplied as a JSON-encoded array of dictionaries, each with the following fields:

• datetime: The datetime from the stream item itself.
• status: An 8-bit number where the left-most bit indicates read/unread status.
• item_id: The guid of the stream item provided by the RSS feed it came from.

Things not done yet:

• Input validation
• Battle hardening
• Testing ( I am developing a command-line-based rss reader to use to test the syncing system's facilities )