README.md

Module: News Feed

The newsfeed module is one of the default modules of the MagicMirror. This module displays news headlines based on an RSS feed. Scrolling through news headlines happens time-based (updateInterval), but can also be controlled by sending news feed specific notifications to the module.

Screenshot

• News Feed Screenshot using the NYT

Using the module

Configuration

To use this module, add it to the modules array in the config/config.js file:

modules: [
	{
		module: "newsfeed",
		position: "bottom_bar",	// This can be any of the regions. Best results in center regions.
		config: {
			// The config property is optional.
			// If no config is set, an example calendar is shown.
			// See 'Configuration options' for more information.

			feeds: [
				{
					title: "New York Times",
					url: "http://www.nytimes.com/services/xml/rss/nyt/HomePage.xml",
				},
				{
					title: "BBC",
					url: "http://feeds.bbci.co.uk/news/video_and_audio/news_front_page/rss.xml?edition=uk",
				},
			]
		}
	}
]

Notifications

Interacting with the module

MagicMirror's notification mechanism allows to send notifications to the newsfeed module. The following notifications are supported:

Notification Identifier	Description
ARTICLE_NEXT	Shows the next news title (hiding the summary or previously fully displayed article)
ARTICLE_PREVIOUS	Shows the previous news title (hiding the summary or previously fully displayed article)
ARTICLE_MORE_DETAILS	When received the first time, shows the corresponding description of the currently displayed news title. The module expects that the module's configuration option showDescription is set to false (default value). When received a second consecutive time, shows the full news article in an IFRAME. This requires that the news page can be embedded in an IFRAME, e.g. doesn't have the HTTP response header X-Frame-Options set to e.g. DENY. When received the next consecutive times, reloads the page and scrolls down by scrollLength pixels to paginate through the article.
ARTICLE_LESS_DETAILS	Hides the summary or full news article and only displays the news title of the currently viewed news item.
ARTICLE_TOGGLE_FULL	Toggles article in fullscreen.
ARTICLE_INFO_REQUEST	Causes newsfeed to respond with the notification ARTICLE_INFO_RESPONSE, the payload of which provides the title, source, date, desc and url of the current news title.

Notifications sent by the module

MagicMirror's notification mechanism can also be used to send notifications from the current module to all other modules. The following notifications are broadcasted from this module:

Notification Identifier	Description
NEWS_FEED	Broadcast the current list of news items.
NEWS_FEED_UPDATE	Broadcasts the list of updates news items.

Note the payload of the sent notification event is ignored.

Example

The following example shows how the next news article title can be displayed on the MagicMirror.

this.sendNotification('ARTICLE_NEXT');

newsfeed specific notification emitting modules

The third party MMM-Gestures module supports above notifications when moving your hand up, down, left or right in front of a gesture sensor attached to the MagicMirror. See module's readme for more details.

Configuration options

The following properties can be configured:

Option	Description
feeds	An array of feed urls that will be used as source. More info about this object can be found below. Default value: [{ title: "New York Times", url: "http://www.nytimes.com/services/xml/rss/nyt/HomePage.xml", encoding: "UTF-8" }] You can add reloadInterval option to set particular reloadInterval to a feed.
showSourceTitle	Display the title of the source. Possible values: true or false Default value: true
showPublishDate	Display the publish date of an headline. Possible values: true or false Default value: true
broadcastNewsFeeds	Gives the ability to broadcast news feeds to all modules, by using sendNotification() when set to true, rather than sendSocketNotification() when false Possible values: true or false Default value: true
broadcastNewsUpdates	Gives the ability to broadcast news feed updates to all modules Possible values: true or false Default value: true
showDescription	Display the description of an item. Possible values: true or false Default value: false
wrapTitle	Wrap the title of the item to multiple lines. Possible values: true or false Default value: true
wrapDescription	Wrap the description of the item to multiple lines. Possible values: true or false Default value: true
truncDescription	Truncate description? Possible values: true or false Default value: true
lengthDescription	How many characters to be displayed for a truncated description? Possible values: 1 - 500 Default value: 400
hideLoading	Hide module instead of showing LOADING status. Possible values: true or false Default value: false
reloadInterval	How often does the content needs to be fetched? (Milliseconds) Possible values: 1000 - 86400000 Default value: 300000 (5 minutes)
updateInterval	How often do you want to display a new headline? (Milliseconds) Possible values:1000 - 60000 Default value: 10000 (10 seconds)
animationSpeed	Speed of the update animation. (Milliseconds) Possible values:0 - 5000 Default value: 2500 (2.5 seconds)
maxNewsItems	Total amount of news items to cycle through. (0 for unlimited) Possible values:0 - ... Default value: 0
ignoreOldItems	Ignore news items that are outdated. Possible values:true or false Default value: false
ignoreOlderThan	How old should news items be before they are considered outdated? (Milliseconds) Possible values:1 - ... Default value: 86400000 (1 day)
removeStartTags	Some news feeds feature tags at the beginning of their titles or descriptions, such as [VIDEO]. This setting allows for the removal of specified tags from the beginning of an item's description and/or title. Possible values:'title', 'description', 'both'
startTags	List the tags you would like to have removed at the beginning of the feed item Possible values: ['TAG'] or ['TAG1','TAG2',...]
removeEndTags	Remove specified tags from the end of an item's description and/or title. Possible values:'title', 'description', 'both'
endTags	List the tags you would like to have removed at the end of the feed item Possible values: ['TAG'] or ['TAG1','TAG2',...]
prohibitedWords	Remove news feed item if one of these words is found anywhere in the title (case insensitive and greedy matching) Possible values: ['word'] or ['word1','word2',...]
scrollLength	Scrolls the full news article page by a given number of pixels when a ARTICLE_MORE_DETAILS notification is received and the full news article is already displayed. Possible values: 1 or 10000 Default value: 500
logFeedWarnings	Log warnings when there is an error parsing a news article. Possible values: true or false Default value: false

The feeds property contains an array with multiple objects. These objects have the following properties:

Option	Description
title	The name of the feed source to be displayed above the news items. This property is optional.
url	The url of the feed used for the headlines. Example: 'http://www.nytimes.com/services/xml/rss/nyt/HomePage.xml'
encoding	The encoding of the news feed. This property is optional. Possible values:'UTF-8', 'ISO-8859-1', etc ... Default value: 'UTF-8'