Show, copy, and save URLs of feed items

[danielhz]

The news app shows the items in a feed. For example, the following screenshot shows how items are displayed. What I miss is the ability to save the item URLs. Currently, the star icon allows me to save items in the starred list of items in the news app. However, I am unable to copy the actual item URL, which is indicated in the RSS file. Thus, I cannot go to the original website, nor copy the item URL to the bookmarks' app or another external application. This feature is needed because feeds usually include some last items, so my previous starred items will be lost.

[SMillerDev]

This feature is needed because feeds usually include some last items, so my previous starred items will be lost.

What do you mean starred items will be lost? And where do you expect this feature to save things?

[Grotax]

I think the way you imagine how news works is wrong.

News fetches the feed and loops through the items in the feed. Items have a unique identifier in feeds usually it's a unique URL I think.

If the item is not yet in the database a new entry is created. Normally news will delete items when you have x read items to save space in the database.

If you star an item it is kept forever and it does not matter if the item is still in the feed file or not. Also read items can be kept forever if you want you can configure that in the admin settings of your nextcloud.

So you don't need to worry about items going away if you star them.

[danielhz]

@Grotax, thank you for your explanation about how the news app works. This means that starred feeds are accumulated in the database. However, when the feeds come from a Mastodon's post, the URL is inaccessible. For example, the following picture shows how I see my own feeds on https://mstdn.degu.cl/@daniel.rss

Unlike the feed generated by GitHub news above, the items of the Mastodon feeds have no title. In the news above, the title is 25.0.3.

The Mastodon generated item (on https://mstdn.degu.cl/@daniel.rss) is:

<item>
  <guid isPermaLink="true">https://mstdn.degu.cl/@daniel/113534398140373251</guid>
  <link>https://mstdn.degu.cl/@daniel/113534398140373251</link>
  <pubDate>Sat, 23 Nov 2024 21:30:32 +0000</pubDate>
  <description>&lt;p&gt;Harriet Tubman was admirable. [...]</description>
</item>

The GitHub generated entry (on https://github.com/nextcloud/news/releases.atom) is:

<entry>
  <id>tag:github.com,2008:Repository/60295792/25.0.3</id>
  <updated>2024-11-27T11:59:16Z</updated>
  <link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://github.com/nextcloud/news/releases/tag/25.0.3"/>
  <title>25.0.3</title>
  <content type="html">&lt;h2&gt;What&#39;s Changed&lt;/h2&gt; [...]</content>
  <author>
    <name>Grotax</name>
  </author>
  <media:thumbnail height="30" width="30" url="https://avatars.githubusercontent.com/u/5429298?s=60&amp;v=4"/>
</entry>

For the GitHub, the news app generates a link whose text is the entry title and its target is the entry link/@href. For the Mastodon generates no link, even when it should generate one from the element link. Hence, I think that what is missing is the ability to display the link attribute in the news item generated by Mastodon. Maybe, the news app supports Atom feeds better than RSS feeds.

[Grotax]

This has nothing to do with the format of the feed. That mastodon has no title for items (anymore?) came up in the past too.

What you basically need is some solution for feeds that have items without titles.

I don't know what should be the solution for that. And I think that is all I can do.

[danielhz]

Yes, the problem can be the lack of a title. In my opinion, the link should be displayed even when the item has no title. Maybe not only Mastodon, but other systems also publish items without a title. I imagine two solutions:

1. Using the publication date or the link URL as the title.
2. Introduce a specific icon in the top-right corner for the item link (independently of the existence of the title).

[danielhz]

Thank you! It works now in version 25.1.0.