Wat is RSS n RSS FEED?

vacation compatible RSS: how can I cache one month of feed items?

  • Say that I will go travelling for one month without internet access. For my email that poses no problem. All incoming mails wait for me in gmail when I get back. But how can I similarly avoid missing content in the many RSS feeds I regularly read? Can some online service cache all the feeds for me? Some of the RSS feeds contain only a few new items every month so for those feeds I will get all those items when I get back. But many other feeds have a much higher throughput of items. Some have 100 or more items every day and the feed itself only includes the latest 50 or so items. For those feeds I risk missing out on almost 3000 items! How can I remedy that? Is there some neat web service that allows me to cache all items in some feeds for a period of time? Or at least one that continually and automatically lets me filter some feeds for certain items and cache all matches? Is there even a site similar to archive.org for RSS? What I've looked into already: I could set up a server at home, run some RSS reader in it and write a script or change some setting so that the reader checks the feeds for new items several times every day. But I have no home server at the moment so it seems both like much work and as overkill as far as solutions go. I hope there is some alternative online solution. I've found several online services that combine or mashup several feeds into one. Yahoo pipes, http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/ for example. But I haven't found one that cache one month of RSS feed items, mashed up or not. There are several RSS to email services (see http://ask.metafilter.com/70159/RSS2Email-Headaches ). But I haven't found one that allow conversion back to RSS later on. But maybe I just haven't searched enough? If there is some solution that reliably can do these steps then tell me about it: RSS >>(through some online service)>> email >>> gmail account >>(one month later, through some online service)>> RSS >>> locally installed RSS-reader. I definitely want the items back into my regular feed reader since I very often do searches on the locally downloaded feeds (I've set the reader to not remove old downloaded feed items) and I want to avoid having to do those searches at several places (feed reader and gmail) if possible. I would most of all prefer some service that simply takes an OPML as input, cache all items in those feeds and then let me grab them easily later.

  • Answer:

    If you run Thunderbird feeds will stay there quite happily.

nolnar at Ask.Metafilter.Com Visit the source

Was this solution helpful to you?

Other answers

Try Google Reader? I haven't noticed any feed limits - it seems my unread stuff in certain feeds I ignore keeps piling up into the hundreds if I let it.

mikepop

I've neglected my google reader for weeks and it tells me I have thousands of unread posts. They don't go anywhere.

desjardins

I agree, Google Reader keeps RSS items forever, even if they're not in the active feed anymore. They had to do this to enable searching and all the fancy googleness.

blue_beetle

Google Reader keeps everything, but I think the OP wants the feed reader to keep a cached copy where the original might not stay online. Take http://postsecret.blogspot.com/, for example. The site only keeps the most recent post up - so in Google Reader, the old posts are there, but the pictures are gone.

puddleglum

How important are these feeds? Important enough that you'll spend an entire day or two on your return reading stuff from three weeks ago? Seriously? For those feeds I risk missing out on almost 3000 items! It's important to note that "missing out" is a relative term. But, to answer your question, Google Reader doesn't appear to have limits.

pdb

I remember seeing a chron job that would do this in an earlier askme, where the person was looking to download blog posts en toto overnight. I'll look around, but maybe someone else remembers how to set that up.

klangklangston

Google Reader definitely does this, and I think that the Newsgator readers (NetNewsWire, FeedDemon and Newsgator) should do this when used with Newsgator online. The unread items will build up on the server and you'll get all of them downloaded to your client when you get home.

andrewraff

Why do you need it converted back to RSS? Couldn't you just read the items in whatever feed reader that you pick? BTW, I'm the maintainer of the rss2email project. If you're interested in using it while you're away, you can MeMail if you need help.

turbodog

google reader will do this.

misanthropicsarah

Related Q & A:

Just Added Q & A:

Find solution

For every problem there is a solution! Proved by Solucija.

  • Got an issue and looking for advice?

  • Ask Solucija to search every corner of the Web for help.

  • Get workable solutions and helpful tips in a moment.

Just ask Solucija about an issue you face and immediately get a list of ready solutions, answers and tips from other Internet users. We always provide the most suitable and complete answer to your question at the top, along with a few good alternatives below.