The News app is a an RSS/Atom feed aggregator. It offers a RESTful API for app developers. The source code is available on GitHub
For further developer and user documentation please visit the wiki
- Apache
- Postgresql
- Sqlite
- MySql
Before reporting bugs:
- We do not support Internet Explorer and Safari (Patches accepted though, except for IE < 10)
- get the newest version of the App Framework
- get the newest version of the News app
- check if they have already been reported
If you are not able to add a feed because its XML does not validate (see this issue for an example), check if:
- it is a valid RSS by running it through the W3C validator
- you are able to add the feed in other feed readers
- it runs without error through SimplePie demo
In the case the third condition is not met, please file a bug on SimplePie issue tracker.
Before you install the app check that the following requirements are met:
- Magic quotes are turned off (only needed for PHP < 5.4)
- You use a browser that supports the FileReader API
- You can use a cron or webcron to call Background Jobs in ownCloud
- Your data/ directory is owned by your webserver user and write/readable
- You have installed php-curl and activated it in the php.ini
- Install ownCloud 5.0.6+ (important!)
Should you have upgraded from a prior version, disable the CSS and JavaScript caching by adding this to :file:`owncloud/config/config.php`:
DEFINE('DEBUG', true);
You can remove the line after a page reload
- Go to the ownCloud apps page
- Activate the App Framework App first, then activate the News app in the apps menu
- Set up ownCloud Background Jobs to enable feed updates. A recommended timespan for feed updates is 15-30 Minutes.
Both the News and App Framework App can be updated through the ownCloud apps page.
Clone the App Framework app into the /var/www directory:
git clone https://github.com/owncloud/appframework.git
Clone the News app into the /var/www directory:
git clone https://github.com/owncloud/news.git
Link both into ownCloud's apps folder:
ln -s /var/www/appframework /var/www/owncloud/apps ln -s /var/www/news /var/www/owncloud/apps
Activate the App Framework App first, then activate the News app in the apps menu
Set up ownCloud Background Jobs to enable feed updates. A recommended timespan for feed updates is 15-30 Minutes.
To get the newest update you can use git. To update the appframework use:
cd /var/www/appframework git pull --rebase origin master
To update the News app use:
cd /var/www/news git pull --rebase origin master
- Next item: n / j / right arrow
- Previous item: p / k / left arrow
- Star current item: s / i
- Keep current item unread: u
- Star item and jump to next one: h
- Open current item: o
- Use MySQL or PostgreSQL for better database performance
- Use the updater script for large installations to thread the update
Delete the folder owncloud/apps/news, then connect to your database and run the following commands where oc_ is your table prefix (defaults to oc_)
DELETE FROM oc_appconfig WHERE appid = 'news';
DROP TABLE oc_news_items;
DROP TABLE oc_news_feeds;
DROP TABLE oc_news_folders;This is a bug in the core backgroundjob system deleting the :file:`owncloud/data/cron.lock` file gets the cron back up running
Another way to fix this is to run a custom updater script
- Check if the cronjob exists with crontab -u www-data -e (replace www-data with your httpd user)
- Check the file permissions of the cron.php file and if www-data (or whatever your httpd user is called like) can read and execute that script
- Check if the cronjob is ever executed by placing an error_log('updating') in the background job file. If the cronjob runs, there should be an updating log statement in your httpd log.
- If there is no updating statement in your logs check if your cronjob is executed by executing a different script
- If your cron works fine but owncloud's cronjobs are never executed, file a bug in core
- Try the updater script
This problem is related to opcode caching, check the issue tracker for how to solve it
All configuration values are set inside :file:`owncloud/data/news/config/config.ini`
The configuration is in INI format and looks like this:
autoPurgeMinimumInterval = 60
autoPurgeCount = 200
simplePieCacheDuration = 1800
feedFetcherTimeout = 60
useCronUpdates = true- autoPurgeMinimumInterval: Minimum amount of seconds after deleted feeds and folders are removed from the database.
- autoPurgeCount: Defines the minimum amount of articles that can be unread per feed before they get deleted
- simplePieCacheDuration: Amount of seconds to cache feeds
- feedFetcherTimeout: Maximum number of seconds to wait for an RSS or Atom feed to load. If a feed takes longer than that number of seconds to update, the update will be aborted
- useCronUpdates: To use a custom update/cron script you need to disable the cronjob which is run by ownCloud by default by setting this to false