Getting Started With rss2email

Instructions for Windows Users

Requirements

Before you install rss2email, you'll need to make sure that a few things are in place. First, is that a version of Python 2.x installed. Second, determine your outgoing email server's address. That should be all you need.

Download

1. Create a new folder
2. Download the following files and move them into your new folder

   rss2email.py
   config.py
   html2text.py
   feedparser.py
   r2e.bat

Configure

Edit the config.py file and fill in your outoing email server's details. If your server requires you to login, change "AUTHREQUIRED = 0" to "AUTHREQUIRED = 1" and enter your email username and password.

Install

From the command line, change to the folder you created and create a new feed database:

r2e new you@yourdomain.com

Subscribe to some feeds:

r2e add http://rss2email.infogami.com/blog/atom.xml

That's the feed to be notified when there's a new version of rss2email. Repeat this for each feed you want to subscribe to.

When you run rss2email, it emails you about every story it hasn't seen before. But the first time you run it, that will be every story. To avoid this, you can ask rss2email not to send you any stories the first time you run it:

r2e run --no-send

Then later, you can ask it to email you new stories:

r2e run

If you get an error message "Sender domain must exist", add a line to config.py like this:

DEFAULT_FROM = rss2email@rss2email.infogami.com

You can make the email address whatever you want, but your mail server requires that the something.com part actually exists.

Automating rss2email

More than likely you will want rss2email to run automatically at a regular interval. Under Windows this is can be easily accomplished using the Windows Task Scheduler. This site has a nice tutorial on it. Just select r2e.bat as the program to run. Once you've created the task, double click on it in the task list and change the Run entry so that "run" comes after r2e.bat. For example, if you installed rss2email in the C:\rss2email folder, then you would change the Run entry from "C:\rss2email\r2e.bat" to "C:\rss2email\r2e.bat run".

Now jump down to the section on customizing rss2email to your needs.

TODO: Make Windows installer package (duh!)

Instructions for UNIX/Linux Users

Requirements

Before you install rss2email, you'll need to make sure that a few things are in place. First, is a version of Python 2.x installed. Second, is whether you have sendmail installed. If sendmail isn't installed, determine your outgoing email server's address. That should be all you need.

Download

A quick way to get rss2email going is using pre-made packages. Here are releases for Debian Linux, Ubuntu Linux and NetBSD.

If you are unable to use these packages or you want the latest and greatest version, here's what you do:

mkdir .rss2email
cd .rss2email
wget http://rss2email.infogami.com/rss2email.py
wget http://www.aaronsw.com/2002/html2text/html2text.py
wget http://feedparser.org/feedparser.py
wget http://lindsey.smith.googlepages.com/r2e
chmod +x r2e

Install

Create a new feed database:

./r2e new you@yourdomain.com

Subscribe to some feeds:

./r2e add http://rss2email.infogami.com/blog/atom.xml

That's the feed to be notified when there's a new version of rss2email. Repeat this for each feed you want to subscribe to.

When you run rss2email, it emails you about every story it hasn't seen before. But the first time you run it, that will be every story. To avoid this, you can ask rss2email not to send you any stories the first time you run it:

./r2e run --no-send

Then later, you can ask it to email you new stories:

./r2e run

You probably want to set things up so that this command is run repeatedly. (One good way is via a cron job.)

If you get an error message "Sender domain must exist", add a line to config.py like this:

DEFAULT_FROM = rss2email@rss2email.infogami.com

You can make the email address whatever you want, but your mail server requires that the something.com part actually exists.

Upgrading from v1.0

If you're upgrading from 1.0, you can import your old channels.txt by running:

awk '{print $2}' < channels.txt | xargs -n 1 ./r2e add

Customize rss2email

There are a number of options, described in full at the top of rss2email.py file, to customize the way rss2email behaves. If you want to change something, edit the config.py file. If you're not using rss2email under Windows, you'll have to create this file if it doesn't already exist.

For example, if you want to receive HTML mail, instead of having entries converted to plain text:

HTML_MAIL = 1

To be notified every time a post changes, instead of just when it's first posted:

TRUST_GUID = 0

And to make the emails look as if they were sent when the item was posted:

DATE_HEADER = 1

TODO: Document all options

More Information

Here's an article in CLI magazine on rss2email.

last updated 2 years ago #