Show HN: Freader, an open source RSS Reader built with Node.js and Angular | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: Freader, an open source RSS Reader built with Node.js and Angular

geekuillaume.github.io

45 pointsgeekuillaume17 comments

I like that it is built using angular so I can get some tips on how authentication is done. However I think the UI needs work, for example expanding a feed button is all the way to the other side, why not slide down on click of title? I found some UI bugs for example, where the + and power icon was underlapping under my feed. The power button also does nothing for me. I also had issues with adding non rss feeds. Otherwise I like it. Nice work.

Yes, I aggre, it still need some work to be good, any help is welcome !

I wish it didn't have the MongoDB requirement. IMO something with a few thousand messages can easily be done w/o a full blown database.

MongoDB runs everywhere and in a very short time and there is a lot of service providing free databases for it. For example, the demo App is using MogoLab free offer and it's working just fine !

While one could disapprove of the choice of database, there's no reason to not use a database when you have little data.

Looking at the source (userDB.js) it seems that passwords are stored as plaintext. A major disappointment.

Yep, I still need to hash it before saving it. I found some libs doing that but I wanted to write an hashing function with salt without having to rely on a lib. Need some work !

Do I just submit a link like https://news.ycombinator.com/rss? When I do that, it says "cannot connect to server." :(

Are you using NodeJs for the cron jobs too? (I am assuming you have cron jobs running to fetch feeds periodically).

Edit: I looked and it seems you are fetching the feeds on-the-fly.

Yes, it only get the feeds when a user need to, it's far more simple and unactives feeds are not refreshed uselessly

The issue with this is that, say a feed contains 10 items, and that between checking the feed more than 10 items are posted, you will miss items.

It is not working and says invalid feed even though the address is correct and works with all other readers.

Weird... What is the feed's URL ?

It crashes on any Atom feed. It seems the code in scrapper.js only handles RSS, and even there makes some assumptions that might not hold for all feeds.

You're right, I need to adapt it to handle any feed, stay tuned ;-)

Edit : I fix an error which crashed the application with a bad feed (without all the fields required) but I still need to adapt it to ATOM feeds

the green background is gonna get annoying, fast :(

Yes, I think I will switch it to a simple white, I'm not a very good web designer but I need to improve the global UI / UX

Reply on news.ycombinator.com