DiscoRSS

What is it?

DiscoRSS is a simple Python script to send RSS feeds to Discord webhooks. It was created because existing bots that did this set limits on the number of feeds, and self-hosting stuff is easier and better anyway. To get this working, you will require the following Python libraries:

requests >= 2.4.2
feedparser

The remaining imports should all be part of the standard Python install.

How to setup

To configure the script, create /etc/discorss.conf with the following structure:

{
    "feeds": [
        {
            "name": "Phoronix",
            "siteurl": "https://www.phoronix.com/",
            "url": "http://www.phoronix.com/rss.php",
            "webhook": "webhook url",
            "offset": -18000
        },
        {
            "name": "Pagetable",
            "siteurl": "https://pagetable.com",
            "url": "https://www.pagetable.com/?feed=rss2",
            "webhook": "webhook url",
            "offset": -18000
        }
    ]
}

Create a webhook for each feed (unless you want them all to show as the same webhook for whatever reason) and make sure to add it in to the config. I have it set up with a webhook for each site, each with the site's icon and name set for the webhook which makes the messages look really nice.

The offset should only be required if feeds aren't showing up. This is because feedparser, in its infinite wisdom, just ignores the timezone when converting publish dates from feeds. So most feeds end up with an epoch in UTC. The offset should be the number of seconds between your time zone and UTC. This will eventually be fixed in a future update, I just need to sit down and wrangle with feedparser and datetime some more. All fields are mandatory, if you want to have no offset for example, set it to 0. The name and siteurl are used to create the "author" field in the Discord embed.

Automation

To automate feed posting, create a systemd service and timer to execute the script.

Use the command systemctl --user edit --full --force discorss.service and then paste in something like this:

[Unit]
Description=Discord RSS feeder
Wants=discorss.timer

[Service]
Type=oneshot
ExecStart=/path/to/discorss.py

[Install]
WantedBy=default.target

Make sure to edit the ExecStart to point to the correct location. Then we need a systemd timer to automatically fire the script. Run systemctl --user edit --full --force discorss.timer and then paste in this:

[Unit]
Description=Timer for DiscoRSS
Requires=discorss.service

[Timer]
Unit=discorss.service
OnCalendar=*-*-* *:00,15,30,45:30
AccuracySec=10s

[Install]
WantedBy=timers.target

To change how often this fires, edit the OnCalendar parameter. The config above has it firing every 15 minutes at half past the minute. Look at the systemd timer man pages for help if you want to tweak it.