README

The News app is a an RSS/Atom feed aggregator. It offers a RESTful API for app developers. The source code is available on GitHub

For further developer and user documentation please visit the wiki

Maintainers

• Alessandro Cosentino
• Bernhard Posselt
• Jan-Christoph Borchardt (Design)

Minimum PHP Version

• PHP >= 5.3.6

Minimum ownCloud Version

• >= 6.0.3

Supported Webservers

• Apache

Supported Databases

• Postgresql
• Sqlite
• MySql

Bugs

Before reporting bugs:

• We do not support Internet Explorer and Safari (Patches accepted though, except for IE < 10)
• get the newest version of the News app
• check if they have already been reported

If you are not able to add a feed because its XML does not validate (see this issue for an example), check if:

• it is a valid RSS by running it through the W3C validator
• you are able to add the feed in other feed readers
• it runs without error through SimplePie demo

In the case the third condition is not met, please file a bug on SimplePie issue tracker.

Before you install the News app

Before you install the app check that the following requirements are met:

• Magic quotes are turned off (only needed for PHP < 5.4)
• You use a browser that supports the FileReader API
• You can use a cron or webcron to call Background Jobs in ownCloud
• Your data/ directory is owned by your webserver user and write/readable
• You have installed php-curl and activated it in the php.ini
• Install ownCloud 6.0.3+ (important!)

Should you have upgraded from a prior version, disable the CSS and JavaScript caching by adding this to :file:`owncloud/config/config.php`:

DEFINE('DEBUG', true);

You can remove the line after a page reload

App Store

Installation

• Go to the ownCloud apps page
• Activate the News app in the apps menu
• Set up ownCloud Background Jobs to enable feed updates. A recommended timespan for feed updates is 15-30 Minutes.

Keep up to date

The News App can be updated through the ownCloud apps page.

Git (development version)

Installation

• Clone the News app into the /var/www/owncloud/apps/ directory:

  git clone https://github.com/owncloud/news.git
  

• Activate the News app in the apps menu

• Set up ownCloud Background Jobs to enable feed updates. A recommended timespan for feed updates is 15-30 Minutes.

Keep up to date

To update the News app use:

cd /var/www/owncloud/apps/news
git pull --rebase origin master

Keyboard shortcuts

• Next item: n / j / right arrow
• Previous item: p / k / left arrow
• Star current item: s / i
• Keep current item unread: u
• Star item and jump to next one: h
• Open current item: o
• Toggle expand of current item in compact view: e

Performance Notices

• Use MySQL or PostgreSQL for better database performance
• Use the updater script for large installations to thread the update

Frequent Problems

How do I reset the News app

Delete the folder owncloud/apps/news, then connect to your database and run the following commands where oc_ is your table prefix (defaults to oc_)

DELETE FROM oc_appconfig WHERE appid = 'news';
DROP TABLE oc_news_items;
DROP TABLE oc_news_feeds;
DROP TABLE oc_news_folders;

All feeds are not updated anymore

This is a bug in the core backgroundjob system deleting the :file:`owncloud/data/cron.lock` file gets the cron back up running

Another way to fix this is to run a custom updater script

All feeds are not updated and theres no cron.lock

• Check if the cronjob exists with crontab -u www-data -e (replace www-data with your httpd user)
• Check the file permissions of the cron.php file and if www-data (or whatever your httpd user is called like) can read and execute that script
• Check if the cronjob is ever executed by placing an error_log('updating') in the background job file. If the cronjob runs, there should be an updating log statement in your httpd log.
• If there is no updating statement in your logs check if your cronjob is executed by executing a different script
• If your cron works fine but owncloud's cronjobs are never executed, file a bug in core
• Try the updater script

News always redirects to files

This problem is related to opcode caching, check the issue tracker for how to solve it

Configuration

All configuration values are set inside :file:`owncloud/data/news/config/config.ini`

The configuration is in INI format and looks like this:

autoPurgeMinimumInterval = 60
autoPurgeCount = 200
simplePieCacheDuration = 1800
feedFetcherTimeout = 60
useCronUpdates = true
proxyHost =
proxyPort = 8080
proxyUser =
proxyPassword =

• autoPurgeMinimumInterval: Minimum amount of seconds after deleted feeds and folders are removed from the database.
• autoPurgeCount: Defines the minimum amount of articles that can be unread per feed before they get deleted
• simplePieCacheDuration: Amount of seconds to cache feeds
• feedFetcherTimeout: Maximum number of seconds to wait for an RSS or Atom feed to load. If a feed takes longer than that number of seconds to update, the update will be aborted
• useCronUpdates: To use a custom update/cron script you need to disable the cronjob which is run by ownCloud by default by setting this to false
• proxHost: The adress of the proxy. Leave blank if no proxy should be used
• proxyPort: The proxy port, defaults to 8080
• proxyUser: The proxy user name for the login. Must not container colons. Leave blank if there is none.
• proxyPassword: The proxy user password for the login