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The News app is an RSS/Atom feed aggregator. It offers a RESTful API for app developers. The source code is available on GitHub

For further developer and user documentation please visit the wiki

• Alessandro Cosentino
• Bernhard Posselt
• Jan-Christoph Borchardt (Design)

• PHP >= 5.3.6

Minimum ownCloud Version -------------------* >= 6.0.3

• Apache

• PostgreSQL
• SQLite
• MySQL

Before reporting bugs:

• We do not support Internet Explorer and Safari (Patches accepted though, except for IE < 10)
• get the newest version of the News app
• check if they have already been reported

If you are not able to add a feed because its XML does not validate (see this issue for an example), check if:

• it is a valid RSS by running it through the W3C validator
• you are able to add the feed in other feed readers
• it runs without error through SimplePie demo

In the case the third condition is not met, please file a bug on SimplePie issue tracker.

Before you install the app check that the following requirements are met:

• Magic quotes are turned off (only needed for PHP < 5.4)
• You use a browser that supports the FileReader API
• You can use a cron or webcron to call Background Jobs in ownCloud
• Your data/ directory is owned by your webserver user and write/readable
• You have installed php-curl and activated it in the php.ini
• Install ownCloud 6.0.3+ (important!)

Should you have upgraded from a prior version, disable the CSS and JavaScript caching by adding this to owncloud/config/config.php:

define('DEBUG', true);

You can remove the line after a page reload

• Go to the ownCloud apps page
• Activate the News app in the apps menu
• Set up ownCloud Background Jobs to enable feed updates. A recommended timespan for feed updates is 15-30 Minutes.

The News App can be updated through the ownCloud apps page.

• Clone the News app into the /var/www/owncloud/apps/ directory:

  git clone https://github.com/owncloud/news.git

• Activate the News app in the apps menu
• Set up ownCloud Background Jobs to enable feed updates. A recommended timespan for feed updates is 15-30 Minutes.

To update the News app use:

cd /var/www/owncloud/apps/news
git pull --rebase origin master

• Next item: n / j / right arrow
• Previous item: p / k / left arrow
• Star current item: s / i
• Keep current item unread: u
• Star item and jump to next one: h
• Open current item: o
• Toggle expand of current item in compact view: e

• Use MySQL or PostgreSQL for better database performance
• Use the updater script for large installations to thread the update

Delete the folder owncloud/apps/news, then connect to your database and run the following commands where oc_ is your table prefix (defaults to oc_)

DELETE FROM oc_appconfig WHERE appid = 'news';
DROP TABLE oc_news_items;
DROP TABLE oc_news_feeds;
DROP TABLE oc_news_folders;

This is a bug in the core backgroundjob system deleting the owncloud/data/cron.lock file gets the cron back up running

Another way to fix this is to run a custom updater script

• Check if the cronjob exists with crontab -u www-data -e (replace www-data with your httpd user)
• Check the file permissions of the cron.php file and if www-data (or whatever your httpd user is called like) can read and execute that script
• Check if the cronjob is ever executed by placing an error_log('updating') in the background job file. If the cronjob runs, there should be an updating log statement in your httpd log.
• If there is no updating statement in your logs check if your cronjob is executed by executing a different script
• If your cron works fine but owncloud's cronjobs are never executed, file a bug in core
• Try the updater script

This problem is related to opcode caching, check the issue tracker for how to solve it

All configuration values are set inside owncloud/data/news/config/config.ini

The configuration is in INI format and looks like this:

autoPurgeMinimumInterval = 60
autoPurgeCount = 200
simplePieCacheDuration = 1800
feedFetcherTimeout = 60
useCronUpdates = true
proxyHost =
proxyPort = 8080
proxyUser =
proxyPassword =

• autoPurgeMinimumInterval: Minimum amount of seconds after deleted feeds and folders are removed from the database.
• autoPurgeCount: Defines the minimum amount of articles that can be unread per feed before they get deleted
• simplePieCacheDuration: Amount of seconds to cache feeds
• feedFetcherTimeout: Maximum number of seconds to wait for an RSS or Atom feed to load. If a feed takes longer than that number of seconds to update, the update will be aborted
• useCronUpdates: To use a custom update/cron script you need to disable the cronjob which is run by ownCloud by default by setting this to false
• proxHost: The adress of the proxy. Leave blank if no proxy should be used
• proxyPort: The proxy port, defaults to 8080
• proxyUser: The proxy user name for the login. Must not container colons. Leave blank if there is none.
• proxyPassword: The proxy user password for the login