scalerts

A feed aggregator built in Python. It sources the articles from the hyperlinks of the RSS feeds given in a text file, stores the relevant information in an SQLite3 database and creates a .xlsx file with only the latest articles in it everytime it is run.

Installation Instructions (For Windows and Ubuntu)

Software required:

• Python 3.0 and newer versions
• SQLite3
• Any Spreadsheet viewer that can open *.xlsx files.

Required Modules for Python:

You can easily use pip install <module_name> on Windows or sudo pip install <module_name> on Ubuntu to install these modules.

• feedparser module
• openpyxl module

To run the program using Command Prompt do the following:

• Add python to your PATH variable.
• Migrate to folder containing the file scalerts.py by using cd command.
• Now you can use the python scalerts.py command to run the file.

To run the program from Terminal do the following:

• Migrate to folder containing the file scalerts.py by using cd command.
• Use the python scalerts.py command to run the file.

Information

• The urlList.txt file in the repository contains a list of RSS feed URLs. This can and should be edited to add your own URLs. Since the program pulls the URLs from this file, it should under no circumstances be deleted.
• The scalerts.db and scalerts.xlsx file in this repository are example database and spreadsheet files that were created using the scalerts.py program. They should be deleted before the program is compiled for the first time.
• You can find instructions on how to make dedicated RSS feeds for any topic using Google alerts here.
• On running the program for the first time, one will see the accompanying database file scalerts.db and excel file scalerts.xlsx being created.
• The database file will be appended with new incoming content and keep increasing in size. This file should not be deleted casually.
• The excel file will be overwritten with new posts everytime the program is compiled. Maintaining daily backups of this file is the user's responsibility. Do not save backups with the same name( and in the same folder) as the scalerts.xlsx file.

Used by AlCircle.com