discord-rss

A simple Discord Bot that periodically parses provided RSS feeds and posts the latest updates to your favorite Discord Server.

Publication Status:

Usage

This project is designed to be run either as a Docker container or as a Go Binary. Once the bot is running, you can use the following commands to interact with it from within your Discord Server:

• !help - Displays a list of available commands
• !status <RSS feed URL> - Displays the current status of the Bot and RSS parser for a given URL
• !list - Displays a list of all RSS feeds currently being parsed in the channel this command is run in

feeds.csv

The feeds.csv file is used to store RSS feed information for discord-rss to parse. This file can have any name, but must follow the following format:

DEFAULT_URL,DEFAULT_CHANNEL_ID,DEFAULT_TIMER_INT,DEFAULT_USERNAME,DEFAULT_PASSWORD
https://www.example.com/rss,123456789,60,username,password
https://www.example2.com/rss,,,,
https://www.example3.com/rss,987654321,10,,
https://www.example4.com/rss,,,,another_password

The first line of the CSV exists for default values. If a value is not provided for a given RSS feed, the default value will be used instead. If a default value is not provided, and you do not provide a value for at least the url, channel id and timer for a given RSS feed, discord-rss will not parse that feed.

Here's a quick breakdown of what each line in the provided CSV is doing:

1. This line is setting default values for the rest of the CSV. Note: Be sure to use proper values for each default or discord-rss will not parse your RSS feeds.
2. This line is parsing the RSS feed at https://www.example.com/rss and posting updates to the Discord Channel with ID 123456789 every 60 seconds. This line also provides a username and password for the RSS feed, which is used for authentication.
3. This line is parsing the RSS feed at https://www.example2.com/rss. This line does not provide values for channel id, timer, username or password, so the default values will be used instead.
4. This line is parsing the RSS feed at https://www.example3.com/rss. This line specifies a 987654321 as its channel ID, and a 10 second interval timer. This line will use the default values for username and password.
5. This line is parsing the RSS feed at https://www.example4.com/rss. This line uses default values for all fields except url and password.

Running discord-rss from its binary

If you're running discord-rss from its binary, you'll need to either compile it yourself using go build, or download the latest version from the discord-rss Releases page.

The recommended syntax for running the project is:

./discord-rss -t YOUR_BOT_TOKEN -f "/path/to/your/feeds/file.csv"

If you are only parsing a single RSS feed, you can use the following syntax:

./discord-rss -t YOUR_BOT_TOKEN -u YOUR_RSS_FEED_URL -c YOUR_DISCORD_CHANNEL_ID -timer INTEGER_VALUE -user YOUR_USERNAME -pass YOUR_PASSWORD

⚠️ Note: You cannot use both the -f and -u flags at the same time. If you do, discord-rss will default to using the -f flag.

Running discord-rss from a Docker container

If you are building the Docker image yourself, you can put your feeds.csv file in the discord-rss/ subdirectory of this project. This file will be copied into your local Docker image upon build. You can then run the following command to build and run the Docker container:

docker build . -t discord-rss:local && \
docker run -d -e BOT_TOKEN=YOUR_BOT_TOKEN discord-rss:local

Otherwise, pull down the latest version of discord-rss and run the image with the following command:

docker pull howemando/discord-rss && \
docker run -d -e BOT_TOKEN=YOUR_BOT_TOKEN -v "/path/to/your/feeds/file.csv:/app/feeds.csv" howemando/discord-rss:latest

⚠️ Note: If you are pulling the image down, Docker will require permission to access the path leading to feeds.csv. If you do not provide this permission, discord-rss will not be able to parse your RSS feeds. For more information, see Docker's documentation on Voumes.

But what about Discord?

To get your BOT_TOKEN, log into the Discord Developer Portal and create an application if you haven't already. Bot tokens are issued from the application's Bot settings.

Besides the bot token, you will need to enable MESSAGE CONTENT INTENT, also under the application's Bot settings.

Finally, you will need to generate an invite link for your bot. Under the application's Oauth2 > URL Generator settings, select the following:

• SCOPES: bot
• BOT PERMISSIONS:
  • GENERAL PERMISSIONS: Read Messages/View Channels
  • TEXT PERMISSIONS: Send Messages

The generated URL is used to invite your bot into Discord servers.

To get your CHANNEL_ID, you'll need to enable developer mode on your Discord Client. This Support Documentation by Discord does a really good walkthrough of how to set that up.

For more information, This article by freecodecamp.org does a great job of going through a simple Discord Bot setup.

Additional Documentation / References

• mmcdole/gofeed
• bwmarrin/discordgo
• Discord Support
• Discord API Documentation
• Docker Volumes