RSS Reader

ANetBBS ships a built-in RSS / Atom feed reader. Users browse it from
the web (Tools → RSS Reader) or the BBS terminal (Main BBS Menu → R).
Sysops manage feeds at Admin → Subsystems → RSS Feeds.

A default feed (X-News at https://x-bit.org/rss/rss.xml) is seeded
on first run so a fresh install ships with at least one feed populated.

How users see it

Web

Tools → RSS Reader lists every active feed with per-user unread
counts.
All Feeds (River) is a combined newest-first stream across every
feed.
Click a feed → paginated item list. New items show in bold with
a NEW badge.
Click an item → full content view. Marks as read.
"Mark all read" button per-feed and global.

Terminal (telnet/SSH)

Press R from the Main BBS Menu.
Feed list shows item count and unread count per feed.
A = combined river of all feeds.
Numeric choice = open that feed.
Inside a feed: numeric = read item, N/P paginate, Q returns.
* marker = unread; reading clears it.

How the poller works

Background daemon thread (anetbbs.rss.poller) wakes on
RSS_POLL_INTERVAL (default 1800s = 30 min) and refreshes every active
feed via Python's feedparser. Items are deduped per-feed by GUID
(falls back to link or title if the feed doesn't supply a GUID).
Failed fetches set feed.last_error so the sysop sees red badges in
the admin list.

To refresh manually, hit the circular-arrow icon next to a feed in
/admin/rss/.

How sysops add a feed

Admin → Subsystems → RSS Feeds → Add Feed:

Field	Notes
Name	Display name shown to users (e.g., `X-News`)
Category	Free text — `news`, `tech`, `scene`, `general`. Used for grouping in future versions; currently informational.
Feed URL	RSS 2.0 / Atom / RSS 1.0 — feedparser handles all of them.
Site URL	Optional human-facing homepage of the feed source.
Description	One-liner shown on the feed picker.
Sort order	Lower = appears first.
Active	Disable to hide a feed without deleting its history.

Saving a new feed triggers an immediate fetch so users see items right
away (no waiting for the next 30-min poll tick).

Deleting a feed cascades — all its items and per-user read state are
removed.

Tunables

RSS_POLL_INTERVAL env var — seconds between polls (default 1800,
minimum 60). Set tighter on a fast-moving feed; relax on stable
feeds to be a polite citizen.

Storage

Table	What it holds
`rss_feeds`	Sysop-configured feeds (URL, name, category, last fetch state).
`rss_items`	Article/post records, deduped per-feed by GUID.
`rss_read_status`	Per-user read markers (presence = read, absence = unread).

Auto-created on app startup via the lightweight migration sweep.
No manual SQL needed.

Future / open questions

Web autorefresh — the user has to reload the page to see new
items between poll ticks. A SocketIO push of "new item arrived"
would be a nice touch.
Feed groupings by category — currently the category field is
stored but not surfaced in the UI.
Per-user feed subscriptions — right now every user sees every
active feed. A future version could let users hide/show specific
feeds.