jReader

Yahoo! Pipes are ready --- After 3 exhaustive days of learning and trying to hack into [Yahoo! Pipes](http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/), I can finally say that things are all set up for **jReader**'s feed delivery. During the development of these ... [More] Pipes, I came across several obstacles - such as the inability to store temporary variables within a Pipe or [Yahoo!'s 200 runs in 10 minutes limitation](http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/docs?doc=troubleshooting#q15). Because of this, I had to invent a way to: * be able to process as many as ***~50 feeds from a single CSV file*** at once * be able to tell what posts came from which source * find a way to get first RSS feed of a page if a non-RSS URL is added into the system * limit output from Yahoo! Pipes, so we don't hit Pipe output limit (provided there is any) In any case, these are the pipes that accomplish all of my requirements (they are **freely available for your own reuse**): * [FetchFeed](http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/pipe.info?_id=979ae72d5686c3bf46358d5de45ff84d) - retrieves RSS data from a feed URL or directly from a website (provided a feed exist for it) * [FeedMerge](http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/pipe.info?_id=2c572f1db5e815682f5f8bc21b122a8d) - merges multiple RSS feeds from a CSV file together based on user parameters I'm extremely glad to say this part is now behind us and I'm looking forward to develop some hands on-stuff now :) *Wish me luck!* [Less]

But this project is missing classes and all that stuff... --- I started coding **jReader** with a single purpose in mind - to create a new kind of RSS service that will be *as fast and responsive as possible*. Because of this idea, I chose ***not ... [More] use use any kind of PHP frameworks*** or even *objects* at all. (With the exception of the built-in MySQL library.) For this reason, you will not find the usual [MVC architecture](http://cs.wikipedia.org/wiki/Model-view-controller) in this project - and I must admit it would ***scare the hell out of me*** if I saw such a code. The thing is - ***PHP itself it not written in objects either***. To be as fast as possible, I have chosen to follow this principle myself. Creating an object just to *deliver a static RSS feed* that updates every hour or so did not quite seem the best approach for me. For all you who were awaiting a [MagpieRSS](http://magpierss.sourceforge.net/) update or clone which you can just plug into a project - I am sorry, this is just not it. There will, however be a *** JSONP API*** available, so you will still be able to reuse **jReader** in your online projects :) [Less]

The problem --- Today, almost all websites have some sort of an RSS feed to keep you updated of their latest news. On the other hand, users may be **overloaded** by all sorts of **irrelevant information** that arise from this trend. The other part ... [More] of the problem would be a magazine website with multiple areas of interest. Such a magazine would report hardware as well as software news, Apple as well as Android information, etc. But what if we are only ***interested in part of the information provided by RSS***? ---- The solution --- Some of the newest RSS readers started to address the issue by providing **filtering options** that can be used to filter out *words, authors, categories or tags* that do not interest you. Their biggest disadvantage is their **learning curve**. You need to **mark each and every part** of each post for tags, authors, categories and words that makes that single post irrelevant to you. **jReader** tries to address this problem by: * employing an intelligent algorithms that **automatically scans** tags, categories, authors and titles of each post for repeating patterns * allowing users to **mark a full posting as irrelevant** (this is where the algorithm kicks in) * at the same time, allowing users to **mark parts of the post** that are always irrelevant (like a category, author or a tag) ---- The technology --- **jReader**'s ideology comes from the simple fact that *everything has already been invented*. It would be a waste of time trying to reinvent the wheel, when we have these technologies coming to help: * **[Google Feed API](https://developers.google.com/feed/)**, which can read just about any RSS data and generate a valid output from them. Furthermore - when possible, Google serves their cached RSS data via a CDN network, making it a lightning fast delivery solution for any device in the world. * **[Yahoo! Pipes](http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/)**, serving as a backup solution in cases when: * Google Feed API does not recognize the feed in question * user tries to add a website URL instead of RSS feed address * Google doesn't like the device requesting RSS feed :P * **[PHP SimpleXML](http://php.net/manual/en/book.simplexml.php)**, serving as a backup of both services mentioned above [Less]