intake/README.md

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:

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

fetch is required. If action or env are absent, they will be treated as if they were empty.

When a feed source is updated, fetch.exe will be executed with fetch.args as arguments. The following environment variables will be set:

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

Each line written to the process's stdout will be parsed as a JSON object representing a feed item. Each line written to stderr will be logged by intake. stdout and stderr are decoded as UTF-8.

If invalid JSON is written, intake will consider the feed update to be a failure. If the exit code is nonzero, intake will consider the feed update to be a failure, even if valid JSON was received. No changes will happen to the feed state as a result of a failed update.

Item actions are performed by executing action.<name>.exe with action.<name>.args as arguments. The process will receive the item, serialized as JSON, on the first line of stdin. The process should write the item back to stdout as a single line of JSON with any updates from the action.