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RSS

Mirror.bot supports automatically sending feed (RSS) updates to Text or Announcement channels on Discord. Free users are limited to only reiving 3 new items every time a feed updates (each time it's fetched).

Adding Feeds

Four things are required when adding a feed:

  • Feed Name - Name used when referring to your feed.
  • Refresh Tier - How fast the feed is fetched.
  • Feed URL - The link of the feed.
  • Channel - Discord Channel where the updates are sent.
  • Format (optional) - Message format.

Refresh tier is directly tied to how much credits a feed costs. Keep in mind that feeds are often cached (don't update immediately) on the provider side, so choosing a refresh rate lover than what a feed updates at is pointless and wasteful of credits.

Refresh Tier Actual Time
Extra-Fast 2 min
Fast 6 min
Standard 15 min
Moderate 60 min (1 hrs)
Slow 240 min (4 hrs)
Extra-slow 480 min (8 hrs)

It's recommended to use either Standard/Moderate at the start and adjust based on how many new items you get each time the feed is updated.

Adding the feed can be done on discord with the /rss command or in the Web Dashboard in the RSS list view. Discord RSS command

Feed Updates

The default way the algorithm works for detecting new items is by comparing it the previous items in the feed by their GUID and in special cases when it's not available the Title and Link.

So it's Important to add feeds that don't change their GUID in a random way to avoid being spammed with new items that are actually duplicates.

Platforms

Due to popularity there are shortcut commands for adding specific platforms:

  • /youtube Adds a the YouTube video feed for a specific channel https://www.youtube.com/feeds/videos.xml?channel_id={CHANNEL_ID}
  • /reddit Adds the new Subreddit feed https://www.reddit.com/r/{SUBREDDIT}/new/.rss

Testing And Logs

After adding a feed it should always be tested to see if the whole system flow works:

  1. Getting the Feed
  2. Parsing and detecting the Feed format
  3. Formatting message according to the template
  4. Sending to the destination.

This is done using the /test rss command. Discord Test RSS command

Every time a feed is fetched it produces the corresponding logs, keep in mind that logs generally take the same amount of time as the Refresh Tier duration to show up.

The last 20 logs can be viewed using /logs rss Discord Test RSS command Logs are kept for 7 days after which they are deleted.

RSSHub

We have an self-hosted RSSHub instance you can use at: 

http://rsshub.railway.internal
The cache duration is set to little less then an hour so when using it do not set the Refresh Tier bellow Moderate (or you will be wasting credits).

The URL is available only when using Mirror.bot not any other RSS reader.

RSSHub Radar

You can set up RSSHub Radar to automatically find feeds you can add while browsing the web.
Replace the instance for a self hosted one:

RSSHub Radar with selected option

Replace RSSHub instance with the Mirror.bot hosted one:

RSShub Radar options with replaced instance to http://rsshub.railway.internal

From then on its safe to copy any link directly into the URL required by /rss on Discord or in the Web Dashboard.

Sported Formats

These are the current feed formats supported:

  • RSS (0.90 to 2.0)
  • Atom (0.3 to 1.0)
  • JSON (1.0 to 1.1)

Everything outside of these standards is treated as an extension and is able to be used while formatting and filtering messages. There exist first class support for Apple iTunes and Dublin Core extensions due to popularity.