Reddit Top RSS

Reddit Top RSS is a set of scripts for Reddit's API that generates RSS feeds for specified subreddits with score thresholds. To preview your outputted feed items there is a front end that utilizes the Bootstrap v4 framework.

Preview

Motivation

I prefer to interact with Reddit in a low-volume way, so I let Reddit Top RSS surface the most popular posts per subreddit in my RSS reader of choice. I usually use the averagePostsPerDay filter so I can expect a certain amount of posts in my feeds per day.

Installation and usage

Reddit app setup

Due to Reddit's 2023 updated API policies it is now required to first set up an app in your Reddit account that Reddit Top RSS will authenticate through.

First, log into your Reddit account.
Navigate to the Reddit app preferences page: https://www.reddit.com/prefs/apps
Click the create app or create another app button, depending on whether you’ve already created an app before.
Choose any name for the app. I've chosen Top RSS. Reddit will not allow you to use Reddit in the name.
Set the type of app to web app.
You can leave description and about url fields blank.
Enter in any valid URI in the redirect uri field. I've used http://reddit-top-rss.test.
Click the create app button when you’re done.
Your app’s client ID and client secret will be displayed. You'll need to add these to either your config.php or Docker environment variables.

Manual

To install this repository manually:

Clone this repository somewhere with PHP >= 5.6 installed.
Copy config-default.php to config.php.
Enter your Reddit user, app ID, and secret into lines 49, 56, and 63, respectively.
Open index.php in a browser to view the front end.
Enter your parameters into the fields to get a preview of the posts that the filters will output. Click the RSS button at top to open a new tab with the rendered RSS XML output of the specified filters. This is the URL you subscribe to in your RSS aggregator.

Docker

A docker image is available at https://hub.docker.com/r/johnny5w/reddit-top-rss.

Command line

docker run -p 80:8080 -e REDDIT_USER=your_reddit_user -e REDDIT_CLIENT_ID=your_app_id -e REDDIT_CLIENT_SECRET=your_app_secret johnny5w/reddit-top-rss:latest

docker-compose


version: '3'
services:
  reddit-top-rss:
    image: johnny5w/reddit-top-rss
    container_name: reddit-top-rss
    restart: unless-stopped
    ports:
      - 80:8080
    environment:
      - REDDIT_USER=your_reddit_user
      - REDDIT_CLIENT_ID=your_app_id
      - REDDIT_CLIENT_SECRET=your_app_secret
      - DEFAULT_SUBREDDIT=news

Docker environment variables

The following required environment variables must be set, or you will not be authorized with Reddit's API:

Parameter	Function
REDDIT_USER	Your Reddit user account with which you've created an app
REDDIT_CLIENT_ID	The client ID of the app you've created
REDDIT_CLIENT_SECRET	The secret for the app you've created

The following optional environment variables can be used to override the application defaults:

Parameter	Function
DEFAULT_SUBREDDIT	This sets the initial subreddit on the first page load. Default: `pics`
MERCURY_URL	URL of your Mercury parser instance. See below.
MERCURY_API_KEY	API key for your Mercury parser instance.
CACHE_REDDIT_JSON	Whether to cache the JSON responses from Reddit. Default: `true`
CACHE_MERCURY_CONTENT	Whether to cache the responses from your Mercury instance. Default: `true`
CACHE_RSS_FEEDS	Whether to cache the outputted XML from Reddit Top RSS. Default: `true`

Supported URL parameters

There are five URL paramenters supported:

subreddit

The exact string of the subreddit as it appears in the Reddit URL. Only one subreddit may be chosen.

score

Items below the desired score will be filtered out.

threshold

This parameter will get the average score for the past month's hot posts and will filter out items that fall below this percentage. This is helpful for volatile subreddits — and subreddits in general — since more people are using the service and causing posts to be scored higher and higher. Since this is a percentage, the number of items in the outputted feed should be more consistent than when using the score parameter.

averagePostsPerDay

Reddit Top RSS will attempt to output an average number of posts per day by looking at a subreddit's recent history to determine the score below which posts will be filtered out. This is the filter I find most useful.

view

Accepted values are html and rss:

html shows the front end preview.
rss shows the rendered RSS XML feed. Use this for the URL to subscribe to in your RSS aggregator.
If the view parameter is left blank or omitted, the front end is shown.

URI examples

https://www.example.com?subreddit=funny&threshold=10000
https://www.example.com?subreddit=worldnews&score=1000&view=rss
https://www.example.com?subreddit=coolgithubprojects&averagePostsPerDay=3

Configuration

Reddit Top RSS comes with a default configuration. If you'd like to turn caching off, set a different default subreddit, or use a self-hosted Mercury parser, just enter your desired values in config.php.

Mercury parser

If you'd like to include parsed article content in your outputted feed items, set a self-hosted Mercury parser URL and optional API key in config.php. An easy to install, Dockerized version of the Mercury parser can be found here: https://www.github.com/HenryQW/mercury-parser-api.

Caching

By default Reddit Top RSS will cache Reddit JSON files, rendered RSS XML files, and Mercury parsed content to speed up the application. To clear the cache, click the Clear cached results link in the footer. To disable caching for any of the above items, set the appropriate values to false in config.php.

License

This project is released under the MIT License.

johnwarne / reddit-top-rss

readme