RSS Reader

ANetBBS ships a built-in RSS / Atom feed reader. Users browse it from
the web (Tools → RSS Reader) or the BBS terminal (Main BBS Menu → R).
Sysops manage feeds at Admin → Subsystems → RSS Feeds.

A default feed (X-News at https://x-bit.org/rss/rss.xml) is seeded
on first run so a fresh install ships with at least one feed populated.

How users see it

Web

Tools → RSS Reader lists every active feed with per-user unread
counts.
All Feeds (River) is a combined newest-first stream across every
feed.
Click a feed → paginated item list. New items show in bold with
a NEW badge.
Click an item → full content view. Marks as read.
"Mark all read" button per-feed and global.

Terminal (telnet/SSH)

Same arrow-key lightbar pattern used throughout the terminal UI — no
numeric selection.

Press R from the Main BBS Menu.
Feed list: shows a numeric unread count per feed. Up/Dn (also
PgUp/PgDn/Home/End) to move, Enter to open a feed, A =
combined river of all feeds, M = mark every feed's items read,
Q back to the main menu.
Inside a feed: Up/Dn to move, Enter to read the selected
item, M = mark this feed's items read, Q back to the feed
list. Unread items show a yellow * and brighter title text; the
selected item's hint line shows [NEW] if it's unread.
Reading an item: Up/Dn scrolls a line, PgUp/PgDn a page,
Home/End jump to top/bottom, Q or Enter returns to the item
list (there's nothing further to drill into from an article).

How the poller works

Background daemon thread (anetbbs.rss.poller) wakes on
RSS_POLL_INTERVAL (default 1800s = 30 min) and refreshes every active
feed via Python's feedparser. Items are deduped per-feed by GUID
(falls back to link or title if the feed doesn't supply a GUID).
Failed fetches set feed.last_error so the sysop sees red badges in
the admin list.

To refresh manually, hit the circular-arrow icon next to a feed in
/admin/rss/.

How sysops add a feed

Admin → Subsystems → RSS Feeds → Add Feed:

Field	Notes
Name	Display name shown to users (e.g., `X-News`)
Category	Free text — `news`, `tech`, `scene`, `general`. Feeds are grouped by this on the web feed picker.
Feed URL	RSS 2.0 / Atom / RSS 1.0 — feedparser handles all of them.
Site URL	Optional human-facing homepage of the feed source.
Description	One-liner shown on the feed picker.
Sort order	Lower = appears first.
Active	Disable to hide a feed without deleting its history.

Saving a new feed triggers an immediate fetch so users see items right
away (no waiting for the next 30-min poll tick).

Deleting a feed cascades — all its items and per-user read state are
removed.

Tunables

RSS_POLL_INTERVAL env var — seconds between polls (default 1800,
minimum 60). Set tighter on a fast-moving feed; relax on stable
feeds to be a polite citizen.

Storage

Table	What it holds
`rss_feeds`	Sysop-configured feeds (URL, name, category, last fetch state).
`rss_items`	Article/post records, deduped per-feed by GUID.
`rss_read_status`	Per-user read markers (presence = read, absence = unread).

Auto-created on app startup via the lightweight migration sweep.
No manual SQL needed.

Your BBS's own outbound feeds (`/feed/*.xml`)

Separate from the feed reader covered above, ANetBBS also publishes
a handful of its own RSS 2.0 feeds (anetbbs/web/feeds.py) so external
aggregators (Slack RSS, Inoreader, etc.) can subscribe to BBS activity:

Feed	What it carries
`/feed/shouts.xml`	Recent public shoutbox posts
`/feed/posts.xml`	Recent board posts (access-checked per board)
`/feed/bulletins.xml`	Recent sysop bulletins
`/feed/echomail.xml`	Recent echomail (access-checked per area)

All four are anonymous-readable by design — that's the whole point of
an aggregator-friendly feed. Worth knowing before you assume otherwise:
/feed/shouts.xml is readable with no login even though posting to
(and browsing) the shoutbox itself requires an account — the feed
exposes the same content a logged-in user already sees, just without
the login step.

Netmail exclusion, found in a security audit: /feed/echomail.xml
now explicitly excludes any NETMAIL-tagged echo area. A NETMAIL area
carries QWK-routed 1-on-1 private mail, not broadcast echomail, and
every other read path for it (area listing, thread view, the inbox
views) enforces per-user ownership on top of the area's own access
level — this anonymous public feed only ever checked the area's
min_access_level, which a NETMAIL area typically leaves permissive.
That meant any visitor meeting that access level could read the
subject/body/sender of every user's private netmail system-wide. There
is no authenticated-per-viewer concept for a public feed to scope
NETMAIL messages to their real owner, so they're left out of this feed
entirely rather than partially exposed.

Future / open questions

Web autorefresh — the user has to reload the page to see new
items between poll ticks. A SocketIO push of "new item arrived"
would be a nice touch.
Per-user feed subscriptions — right now every user sees every
active feed. A future version could let users hide/show specific
feeds.