gator

gator

A CLI blog aggregator that allows multiple users to add, track and follow RSS feeds.

Requirements

You'll need Postgres and Go installed on your computer in order to compile and run this program

Installation

First, install gator with: go install github.com/thmastin/gator@latest

This command downloads, builds, and installs gator to your Go bin directory. By default, this is $HOME/go/bin on Linux and macOS, or %USERPROFILE%\go\bin on Windows.

Make sure your Go bin directory is in your PATH so you can run gator from anywhere.

On Linux/macOS, you can add this line to your .bashrc, .zshrc, or .profile:

export PATH="$PATH:$HOME/go/bin"

On Windows, add %USERPROFILE%\go\bin to your system’s PATH environment variable.See here for instructions on editing your PATH on Windows.

Configuration

Before running gator, create a config file named .gatorconfig.json in your home directory. Here’s what it should look like:

• Linux/macOS: /home/yourname/.gatorconfig.json
• Windows: C:\Users\YourName\.gatorconfig.json

{
  "db_url": "url for your postgres DB goes here",
  "current_user_name": ""
}

• db_url: The full connection string to your Postgres database
• current_user_name: Your username for the application

You can copy this example and change the values for your setup. Be sure not to share your real .gatorconfig.json—keep it out of version control.

Commands

All commands use the following format: gator <command> <arguments>

Examples:

• register <username>: Registers a user and logs them in.
• users: Shows all users in the database.
• login <username>: Changes active user to the provided username.
• addfeed <name> <feed url>: Adds an RSS feed and follows it.
• follow <feed url>: Follows a feed another user has added.
• feeds: Displays all feeds.
• following: Shows feeds the logged in user is following.
• unfollow <feed url>: Unfollows a feed.
• agg <time>: Starts the aggregator to fetch the oldest feeds the user is following. The time argument sets how often to fetch, in hour-minute-second format (e.g., 5m20s will pull feeds every 5 minutes and 20 seconds.)
• browse <number of posts>: Shows the most recent posts from followed feeds. Defaults to 2, but can be set by the user.