friendica icon indicating copy to clipboard operation
friendica copied to clipboard

[rss] Make feed refresh interval configurable for users

Open kr428 opened this issue 1 year ago • 10 comments

Currently, it seems Friendica does refresh RSS feeds then and now, but at "random" intervals for a user perspective. While this is sufficient for using Friendica as a feed reader, it feels a bit clumsy if using RSS for resharing posts off ones own blog. Would it be possible, for these use cases, to introduce a feed-specific time setting so users can make sure such feeds are updated more often?

kr428 avatar Apr 26 '24 09:04 kr428

It is an admin setting to enable the possibility for a user to set their own poll intervals. But the automatic mode should work reliably. It polls in a frequency that matches the post frequency.

annando avatar Apr 26 '24 17:04 annando

It polls in a frequency that matches the post frequency.

I am unsure I understand this, to be honest. Tried this with my personal blog to my Friendica instance, and I noticed it took in between 1..2h for a post to make it to my profile. Compared that, too, to Hubzilla on some system where this delay is somewhere in between 10..15mins (or micro.blog where it's even shorter, something in between 2..5mins). What exactly does this depend on?

kr428 avatar Apr 29 '24 05:04 kr428

The system has got a look at the post frequency in the feed. So when this feed normally publishes a post once per day, then it will only query for the post once per day but not every 5 minutes.

annando avatar May 02 '24 21:05 annando

The described behavior sounds sane to find a balance between load and good update interval. Does this need changing?

foss- avatar May 27 '24 08:05 foss-

Without knowing how the system works under the hood, I still think it would be preferrable to set this interval manually per feed. Like, in example, my "micro blog" (external Bludit) updates fairly often while my long-form blog rarely sees new posts. The latter, I'd set to refresh, like, once a day or hour, while the former I'd probably set to a 10..15min interval. At the moment, this still seems considerably longer.

kr428 avatar Aug 28 '24 12:08 kr428

Problem is that this creates a lot of unnecessary load in the system when a feed is updated maybe once a month but the user decided to update it every 5 minutes. Especially on systems that fetch a lot of feeds, this really can stress these systems. That's the reason why an admin can decide to set this to automatic for their users.

annando avatar Aug 28 '24 12:08 annando

Yeah, I can imagine. That's why I have a difficult gut feeling about this one as well. What about adding some sort of webhook then? If an external system updates (its data and subsequently feed), maybe it would work to "notify" a Friendica instance to refresh "now", which would make it possible to have long polling intervals? Or is this too specific a use case?

kr428 avatar Aug 28 '24 12:08 kr428

Once there had been a standard named PubSubHubbub. I'm unsure if anyone supports it in the wild.

annando avatar Aug 28 '24 13:08 annando

Does Friendica support that at the moment? If so, I'd look into that and see whether that fits my needs. For looking at tools such as EchoFeed, they usually support a "plain" HTTP endpoint to post "something" to trigger "some" action (which seems both pragmatic and disputable approach).

kr428 avatar Aug 28 '24 13:08 kr428

AFAIK it is only coded for OStatus. Please check if you find any feeds that support this standard. Then I can do some tests.

annando avatar Aug 28 '24 14:08 annando