Feed Read is a multi-feed RSS engine for Mystic BBS.

Features:

• Multi-feed support
• Stable article IDs (GUID tracking)
• Mystic ANSI output
• Automatic Mystic menu generation
• Per-article storage
• Quote mode for message posting
• Feed caching
• Duplicate prevention

This system allows users to:

• Browse RSS feeds inside Mystic
• Select an article
• Quote or insert the article into a JAM message

• Python 3.9+
• feedparser
• unidecode
• Mystic BBS (JAM message base)

Install dependencies:

pip install feedparser unidecode

feed_read/
│
├── feed_read.py
├── feeds.ini
│
├── feeds/
│   ├── cnn.ini
│   ├── slashdot.ini
│
├── output/
│   ├── cnn.txt
│   ├── cnn/
│   │   ├── index.json
│   │   ├── 1.txt
│
├── cache/
│
└── mystic/
    └── feeds.mnu

[Feeds]
cnn = feeds/cnn.ini
slashdot = feeds/slashdot.ini
 
[Menu]
menuFile = mystic/feeds.mnu
menuTitle = RSS Feed Reader

Example: feeds/cnn.ini

[Feed]
titleName = CNN News
rssurl = https://rss.cnn.com/rss/edition.rss
outputFileName = output/cnn.txt
maxPosts = 5
cacheMinutes = 15
 
[Theme]
headerColor = |09
titleColor = |10
textColor = |15
 
[Cleanup]
removePattern =

Process all feeds:

python3 feed_read.py --all

Process single feed:

python3 feed_read.py --feed cnn

List feeds:

python3 feed_read.py --list

Add menu entry to load:

mystic/feeds.mnu

From Mystic menu:

python3 feed_read.py --quote cnn 3 > temp/rss.txt

Then open message editor and insert temp/rss.txt.

python3 feed_read.py --article cnn 3 > temp/rss.txt

Article IDs are based on RSS GUID values.

• IDs never shift
• Old articles retain same number
• Only new articles receive new IDs
• Duplicate posts are prevented

Tracking stored in:

output/<feed>/index.json

To reset a feed completely:

1. Delete output/<feed>/
2. Delete cache/<feed>.xml
3. Re-run feed_read.py --feed <feed>

Change:

maxPosts = 5

Modify Theme section per feed.

Run every 15 minutes:

*/15 * * * * cd /path/to/feed_read && python3 feed_read.py --all

• Does not execute feed content
• HTML tags are stripped
• Unicode normalized
• No direct JAM writing (Mystic handles message creation)

• Category filtering
• Per-user feed subscriptions
• JSON output mode
• HTML export mode
• Direct JAM API writer (advanced)
• Feed health monitoring

v2.0 – Multi-feed engine v2.1 – Article extraction + quote mode v2.2 – Stable GUID tracking

Author: “BIG” Rich Lawrence License: CC BY-SA 4.0