Understanding RSS

[AnomalyNexus]

So I'm planning on writing a RSS reader for myself w/ some custom functionality. I think I'll manage with the code, but I don't get something a bit more fundamental about RSS:

Actual downloaded RSS file lists 7 articles. (1 hours worth of article publishing, news24 in this case)
Google reader lists about 20x as much for any given day.

i.e. If my app only runs once a day, then I'd only get like 10% of the published stuff.

So how do I grab all the articles without having a server running 24/7 to catch everything (Not an option)?

 

[James]

Without polling you are in trouble I am afraid.

 

[guest2013-1]

You need to poll it or have something on a webserver somewhere poll it for you to then download

 

[AnomalyNexus]

Damn. Ok, any ideas on how I can work around this? Not really keen to rent a server just to read some bloody news.

I know of services that will combine feeds but none that store & republish it.

 

[guest2013-1]

You could just visit the site at night and read it like that?

Not entirely sure, but Outlook has RSS built in which downloads the newest entries all day long, that requires your machine to be on and online all the time though. The reason I mention this is I'm sure GMail will have a similar feature, and GMail is free, always online. So you might just setup an account with them, get all the RSS feeds to go there (GMail can pull them I'm sure?) and then just POP the account from your normal mail client?

 

[AnomalyNexus]

Acid, I nominate you hero of the day.

Your POP suggestion got me thinking about how I could use google infrastructure to get around the 24/7 issue. Then I realized its so much easier: I just need to get my hands on the data in Google Reader...and that can be done with the (so far) unofficial Google Reader API.

e.g. the following shows how many unread feeds you've currently got (assuming you are logged in)
http://www.google.com/reader/api/0/unread-count?all=true

The authentication side will be a bit painful (https etc) but this sounds like it'll work.

Thanks all