newsbot

RSS reader bot for Mattermost (and possibly Slack). It will scrape RSS feeds from a config file at a defined interval, and broadcast the source and headlines to a Mattermost channel. Articles are written out to a data file as they are published, to avoid repeats and excessive spam when restarting the bot.

Requires Python 3 w/ configparser, hashids, feedparser, and matterhook

Run without a config.conf to generate a base one. Example config:

[newsbot]
broadcast = True
SECRET_KEY = 9999999999999
baseURL = https://mattermost.yourdomain.com
hook = WEBHOOK
channelname = newsroom
username = newsbot
refresh = 30
nax = 5
[feeds]
feeds = https://news.ycombinator.com/rss,http://catless.ncl.ac.uk/risksrss2.xml

Configurables:

• broadcast - Whether to send output
• SECRET_KEY - salt used for internal article IDs
• max - max # of articles to scrape
• baseURL - address of mattermost server, with protocol and optional :port
• hook - webhook key, ex. http://mattermost.server/hook/FOOBARBAZ
• refresh - number of minutes between feed updates.
• feeds - comma delimited list of RSS locations
• debug - verbose console

Screenshot:

Console screenshot: