RSS News Viewer - Modernized

A beautiful, Discord-style RSS news aggregator with monthly archiving, search, filtering, and modern glassmorphism design.

✨ New Features

🗓️ Monthly Rotation

• Automatically archives news.json at the start of each month
• Archives stored in data/archives/news-YYYY-MM.json
• View past months through the Archives interface

🎨 Modern Design

• Glassmorphism card design with blur effects
• Smooth animations and hover effects
• Gradient accents and glowing elements
• Animated background patterns
• Responsive mobile-first layout

🔍 Search & Filtering

• Real-time search across titles, content, and authors
• Filter by news source (CBS, ABC, CBC, NBC4, Other)
• "Show New Only" toggle for latest articles
• Clear all filters button

📊 Statistics Dashboard

• Total articles count
• New articles this month
• Current month display

📁 Archive Viewer

• Browse historical news by month
• View archived articles with full functionality
• See archive metadata (date created, item count)

🚀 Quick Start

Using Docker (Recommended)

# Build and start the container
docker-compose up -d

# View logs
docker-compose logs -f

# Stop the container
docker-compose down

The app will be available at http://localhost:4000

Manual Installation

# Install dependencies
npm install

# Start the server
npm start

📂 Directory Structure

.
├── server.js              # Backend with monthly rotation
├── index.html             # Modern frontend (goes in public/)
├── dedupe-news.js         # Utility to remove duplicates
├── package.json           # Dependencies
├── Dockerfile             # Container definition
├── docker-compose.yml     # Docker orchestration
└── data/                  # Persisted data (auto-created)
    ├── news.json          # Current month's news
    ├── meta.json          # Rotation metadata
    └── archives/          # Monthly archives
        ├── news-2026-01.json
        └── news-2026-02.json

🔌 API Endpoints

Current News

• GET /api/news - Get all current news items
• POST /api/news - Add new news items (from n8n)
• GET /api/health - Health check

Archives

• GET /api/archives - List all available archives
• GET /api/archives/:month - Get specific month's archive (e.g., 2026-01)

🎯 n8n Integration

Your existing n8n workflows will continue to work! Just POST to /api/news:

POST http://localhost:4000/api/news
Content-Type: application/json

{
  "items": [
    {
      "title": "Article Title",
      "link": "https://example.com/article",
      "content": "Article content...",
      "pubDate": "2026-02-04T12:00:00Z",
      "creator": "Author Name",
      "category": "Technology"
    }
  ]
}

🛠️ Configuration

Environment Variables

• PORT - Server port (default: 4000)
• TZ - Timezone for monthly rotation (default: America/New_York)

Volume Mounts

The ./data directory is mounted to persist:

• Current news items
• Monthly archives
• Rotation metadata

🎨 Customization

Color Scheme

Edit CSS variables in index.html:

:root {
  --bg-primary: #0a0e1a;
  --accent-primary: #818cf8;
  --accent-secondary: #a78bfa;
  /* ... more variables ... */
}

Monthly Rotation Time

The app checks for month changes every 24 hours. It runs at startup and then daily.

🔧 Maintenance

Deduplicate News

If you have duplicate entries:

npm run dedupe

View Archives

Click the "📁 Archives" button in the UI to browse past months.

Manual Archive

Archives are created automatically, but you can manually copy data/news.json to data/archives/news-YYYY-MM.json if needed.

📱 Features in Detail

Search

• Case-insensitive
• Searches title, content, and author
• Real-time filtering

Source Filtering

• CBS News (Blue)
• ABC News (Orange)
• CBC News (Cyan)
• NBC4 (Green)
• Other (Gray)

New Badge

• Items marked as "NEW" in the current batch
• Pulsing animation
• Green gradient with glow effect
• Cleared when new items arrive

Modal View

• Click any card to open full article view
• Displays full content
• Shows all metadata
• Large image preview
• "Read full article" button

🐛 Troubleshooting

News not loading

• Check docker-compose logs -f
• Verify data/news.json exists and is valid JSON
• Check n8n webhook is POSTing correctly

Archives not showing

• Ensure the previous month had items
• Check data/archives/ directory exists
• Verify date/time is correct (check TZ env var)

Duplicates appearing

• Run npm run dedupe
• Check n8n workflow isn't sending duplicates
• Verify items have unique link or guid fields

📝 License

MIT

🤝 Contributing

This is a personal project, but feel free to fork and customize!