Now I have two scripts for bookmarking in Newsboat, but it only has one reserved key for bookmarking a post. It does have macros, though, so you can use one to set the bookmarking command to a given script and bind it to something memorable. My mutt convention is to lead macros with a period, so I kept that here by unbinding Newsboat’s default macro prefix (,) and setting “.”.

So, .l to save to Linkding, .w to save to Wallabag:

# macros
bind-key . macro-prefix
unbind-key ,
macro w set bookmark-cmd "op run --env-file=\"$HOME/.env\" -- ~/bin/wallabag.rb"; bookmark
macro l set bookmark-cmd "op run --env-file=\"$HOME/.env\" -- ~/bin/linkding.rb"; bookmark

And here’s the Wallabag bookmarking script:

#!/usr/bin/env ruby

require 'httparty'
require 'json'

entry_url = ARGV[0]

wallabag_url="https://reader.example.net"

client_id = ENV['WALLABAG_CLIENT']
client_secret = ENV['WALLABAG_SECRET']
username = ENV['WALLABAG_USER']
password = ENV['WALLABAG_PASSWORD']

token_params = {grant_type: "password", client_id: client_id, client_secret: client_secret, username: username, password: password}
token_req = HTTParty.post("#{wallabag_url}/oauth/v2/token", body: token_params)
access_token = token_req["access_token"]

headers = {'Content-Type' => "application/json", 'Authorization' => "Bearer #{access_token}"}
params = {url: entry_url, starred: 0, archive: 0}
resp = HTTParty.post("#{wallabag_url}/api/entries.json", body: params.to_json, headers: headers)

Newsboat is pretty cool! It’s a plaintext RSS reader that has strong affinities for mutt in look and configuration.

Like mutt, it might not crowd out everything else in the toolbox but it can help you burn through the subscription list and triage even if you have more comfortable ways of reading the content you process.

It also has built-in filtering. If you’re using an RSS provider that already does that, e.g. FreshRSS or Feedly, that might not be super valuable, but it’s easy to make a killfile either way:

ignore-mode display
ignore-article "*" "link =~ \"/ducks/\""
ignore-article "*" "link =~ \"/advice/\""
ignore-article "*" "link =~ \"/nfl/\""
ignore-article "*" "link =~ \"/beavers/\""
ignore-article "*" "link =~ \"/blazers/\""
ignore-article "*" "link =~ \"/highschoolsports/\""
ignore-article "*" "link =~ \"/entertainment/\""
ignore-article "*" "link =~ \"/realestate-news/\""
ignore-article "*" "link =~ \"/food/\""
ignore-article "*" "link =~ \"/hawks/\""

Scripting the Linkding API to make a bookmark function for Newsboat

If you like reading longform plaintext maybe Newsboat is all you need. I tend to treat RSS as a two-step process: See an interesting thing, send it to some sort of RIL or bookmarking service. Newsboat has a bookmarking function you can customize with your own scripts. It just passes the article URL, title, description, and website description to your script, which has to talk to whatever API. There are a bunch of examples in the Newsboat contrib directory for things like Pocket, Pinboard, and Evernote. No Linkding, but the Linkding API is simple enough.

Could be simpler but I bounced off of net:http in my formative years:

#!/usr/bin/env ruby

require 'httparty'
require 'json'

linkding_uri = "https://links.puddingtime.net/api/bookmarks/"

# Get your Linkding API key from Settings > Integrations

token = ENV['LINKDING']

link_url = ARGV[0]
link_title = ARGV[1]
description = ARGV[2]
website_title = ARGV[3]

params = {url: URI(link_url), title: link_title, website_title: website_title, unread: true}
headers = {'Content-Type' => "application/json", 'Authorization' => "Token #{token}"}

resp = HTTParty.post(linkding_uri, body: params.to_json, headers: headers)

Previously I was using a modified feed that was meant to work well for social syndication (e.g. cross-posting to Mastodon and Twitter). It included just the post summary plus + tags as a way to aid with discovery (especially in Mastodon). That didn’t sit super well with me – I’m a “full content” kind of person – but figuring out how to get Hugo to do two feeds took some doing.

While I was in there, I also shortened the length of the feeds to 20 posts. I think there are a few more things to do to make it all work just so, but I’m content to just have a full content feed back in place for now. Also, if you liked the old feed format (I guess some people like summaries and clicking through?) it’s still around, but I renamed it to /social.xml, since its primary purpose is driving an IFTTT cross-posting recipe.

Setting it up

If you’re curious about how the two feeds are configured:

First, you need two template files in your site’s layouts/_default directory:

• rss.xml
• list.socialrss.xml

The first one is a standard Hugo RSS template with a slight modification to the description property to use the full content of a post vs. the summary.

<description>{{ .Content | html }}</description>

The second template uses the post summary, and adds a partial:

<description>{{ .Summary | html }} <br />
   {{ partial "rss_tags.html" . }}
</description>

The partial is how I get post tags for use in syndication to the social feed. Mastodon clients tend to auto-link hashtags, and hashtags are key to discovery in Mastodon:

{{- $tags := .Language.Params.Taxonomies.tag | default "tags" }}
{{- range ($.GetTerms $tags) }} #{{ .LinkTitle }}  {{- end }}

config.yml looks like this in my setup:

outputs:
  home:
    - HTML
    - RSS
    - SocialRSS
    - JSON

outputFormats:
  RSS:
    mediatype: "application/rss+xml"
    baseName: "index"
    isPlainText: true
    notAlternative: true

  SocialRSS:
    mediatype: "application/rss+xml"
    baseName: "social"
    isPlainText: true

mediaTypes:
  "application/rss":
    suffixes: ["xml"]