intake

intake is an arbitrary feed aggregator.

Feed Source Interface

The base intake directory is $XDG_DATA_HOME/intake. Each feed source's data is contained within a subdirectory of the base directory. The name of the feed source is the name of the subdirectory.

Feed source directories have the following structure:

intake
 |- <source name>
 |   |- intake.json
 |   |- state
 |   |- <item id>.item
 |   |- <item id>.item
 |   |- ...
 |- <source name>
 |   |  ...
 | ...

intake.json must be present; the other files are optional. Each .item file contains the data for one feed item. state provides a file for the feed source to write arbitrary data, e.g. JSON or binary data.

intake.json has the following structure:

{
  "action": {
    "fetch": {
      "exe": "<absolute path to program or name on intake's PATH>",
      "args": ["list", "of", "program", "arguments"]
    },
    "<action name>": {
      "exe": "...",
      "args": "..."
    }
  },
  "env": { ... }
}

Each key under action defines an action that can be taken for the source. The fetch action is required. env is optional. Each key under env will be set as an environment variable when executing actions.

When an action is executed, intake executes the exe program for the action with the corresponding args as arguments. The process's environment is as follows:

• intake's environment is inherited.
• STATE_PATH is set to the absolute path of state.
• Each key in env in config.json is passed with its value.

Anything written to stderr by the process will be logged by intake.

The fetch action is used to fetch the current state of the feed source. It receives no input and should write feed items to stdout as JSON objects, each on one line. All other actions are taken in the context of a single item. These actions receive the item as a JSON object on the first line of stdin. The process should write the item back to stdout with any changes as a result of the action.

An item must have a key under action` with that action's name to support executing that action for that item.

All encoding is done with UTF-8. If an item cannot be parsed or the exit code of the process is nonzero, intake will consider the action to be a failure. No items or other feed changes will happen as a result of a failed action, except for changes to state done by the action process.