Inbound RSS
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All of eelchat's core functionality is now in place. In this section, we'll add a nice-to-have: inbound RSS feeds. You can add RSS feeds to channels, and whenever one of the feeds has a new item, it'll get posted to the channel. This will give us an excuse to use Biff's scheduled tasks and queues.
First we'll add a :subscription document type to our schema:
;; src/com/eelchat/schema.clj
;; ...
[:channel/title :string]
[:channel/community :community/id]]
+ :subscription/id :uuid
+ :subscription [:map {:closed true}
+ [:xt/id :subscription/id]
+ [:subscription/url :string]
+ [:subscription/channel :channel/id]
+ [:subscription/last-post-uri {:optional true} :string]
+ [:subscription/fetched-at {:optional true} inst?]
+ [:subscription/last-modified {:optional true} :string]
+ [:subscription/etag {:optional true} :string]]
+
:message/id :uuid
:message [:map {:closed true}
[:xt/id :message/id]
:subscription/last-modified and :subscription/etag will hold the values of their respective response headers whenever we fetch the RSS feed. This will let us avoid downloading the feed when there haven't been any new items yet. :subscription/last-post-uri will help us double check if we've already seen the feed's most recent item or not.
Next, the boring part: we need some UI for subscribing to RSS feeds. Let's take the lazy way out and implement it as a set of chat commands. Community admins will be able to add subscriptions by typing /subscribe [url]. You can list the subscriptions by typing /list, and you can unsubscribe via /unsubscribe [url]. This way we don't have to figure out where to stick another form in the UI.
Our RSS bot will need to write messages of its own to the channel (both to provide output for chat commands and to display new RSS items), so let's add :system as a possible value for the :message/membership key:
;; src/com/eelchat/schema.clj
;; ...
:message/id :uuid
:message [:map {:closed true}
[:xt/id :message/id]
- [:message/membership :membership/id]
+ [:message/membership [:or :membership/id [:enum :system]]]
[:message/text :string]
[:message/channel :channel/id]
[:message/created-at inst?]]})
We'll need to update our message rendering code to handle the new value. Let's just get that out of the way now:
;; src/com/eelchat/app.clj
;; ...
(defn message-view [{:message/keys [membership text created-at]}]
- (let [username (str "User " (subs (str membership) 0 4))]
+ (let [username (if (= :system membership)
+ "🎅🏻 System 🎅🏻"
+ (str "User " (subs (str membership) 0 4)))]
[:div
[:.text-sm
[:span.font-bold username]
Now we'll modify the com.eelchat.app/new-message function to have it inspect the messages and execute commands when appropriate. Let's add a command-tx function that returns a transaction representing the result of the command (which can be empty if there was no command to execute):
;; src/com/eelchat/app.clj
(ns com.eelchat.app
(:require [com.biffweb :as biff :refer [q]]
[com.eelchat.middleware :as mid]
[com.eelchat.ui :as ui]
+ [clojure.string :as str]
[ring.adapter.jetty9 :as jetty]
[rum.core :as rum]
[xtdb.api :as xt]))
;; ...
+(defn command-tx [{:keys [biff/db channel roles params]}]
+ (let [subscribe-url (second (re-find #"^/subscribe ([^\s]+)" (:text params)))
+ unsubscribe-url (second (re-find #"^/unsubscribe ([^\s]+)" (:text params)))
+ list-command (= (str/trimr (:text params)) "/list")
+ message (fn [text]
+ {:db/doc-type :message
+ :message/membership :system
+ :message/channel (:xt/id channel)
+ :message/text text
+ ;; Make sure this message comes after the user's message.
+ :message/created-at (biff/add-seconds (java.util.Date.) 1)})]
+ (cond
+ list-command
+ [(message (apply
+ str
+ "Subscriptions:"
+ (for [url (->> (q db
+ '{:find (pull subscription [:subscription/url])
+ :in [channel]
+ :where [[subscription :subscription/channel channel]]}
+ (:xt/id channel))
+ (map :subscription/url)
+ sort)]
+ (str "\n - " url))))]
+
+ (not (contains? roles :admin))
+ nil
+
+ subscribe-url
+ [{:db/doc-type :subscription
+ :db.op/upsert {:subscription/url subscribe-url
+ :subscription/channel (:xt/id channel)}}
+ (message (str "Subscribed to " subscribe-url))]
+
+ unsubscribe-url
+ [{:db/op :delete
+ :xt/id (biff/lookup-id db :subscription/channel (:xt/id channel) :subscription/url unsubscribe-url)}
+ (message (str "Unsubscribed from " unsubscribe-url))])))
+
(defn new-message [{:keys [channel membership params] :as ctx}]
(let [message {:xt/id (random-uuid)
:message/membership (:xt/id membership)
:message/channel (:xt/id channel)
:message/created-at (java.util.Date.)
:message/text (:text params)}]
(biff/submit-tx (assoc ctx :biff.xtdb/retry false)
- [(assoc message :db/doc-type :message)])
+ (concat [(assoc message :db/doc-type :message)]
+ (command-tx ctx)))
[:<>]))
Try it out:
Now that the CRUD is taken care of, we need to actually fetch the RSS feeds and such. We'll add a scheduled task that runs every 5 minutes and fetches any feeds which haven't been fetched in the past 30 minutes. If any of those feeds have a new post, we'll write a message to the appropriate channel with an excerpt from the post and a link.
Add these dependencies to deps.edn:
;; deps.edn
;; ...
{:paths ["src" "resources" "target/resources"]
:deps {com.biffweb/biff #:git{:url "https://github.com/jacobobryant/biff", :sha "529660f", :tag "v1.0.0"}
camel-snake-kebab/camel-snake-kebab {:mvn/version "0.4.3"}
+ remus/remus {:mvn/version "0.2.2"}
+ org.jsoup/jsoup {:mvn/version "1.11.3"}
metosin/muuntaja {:mvn/version "0.6.8"}
(Sometimes dependencies can be added automatically, but in this case you'll need to hit Ctrl-C and run clj -M:dev dev again.)
We'll use Remus to fetch and parse the RSS feeds, and we'll use jsoup to convert the posts' HTML content to plain text for our excerpts. Create a new namespace com.eelchat.subscriptions with the following contents:
;; src/com/eelchat/subscriptions.clj
(ns com.eelchat.subscriptions
(:require [com.biffweb :as biff :refer [q]]
[remus :as remus])
(:import [org.jsoup Jsoup]))
(defn every-n-minutes [n]
(iterate #(biff/add-seconds % (* n 60)) (java.util.Date.)))
(defn subscriptions-to-update [db]
(q db
'{:find (pull subscription [*])
:in [t]
:where [[subscription :subscription/url]
[(get-attr subscription :subscription/fetched-at #inst "1970")
[fetched-at ...]]
[(<= fetched-at t)]]}
(biff/add-seconds (java.util.Date.) (* -60 30))))
(defn assoc-result [{:keys [biff/base-url]} {:subscription/keys [url last-modified etag] :as subscription}]
(assoc subscription ::result (biff/catchall-verbose
(remus/parse-url
url
{:headers (biff/assoc-some
{"User-Agent" base-url}
"If-None-Match" etag
"If-Modified-Since" last-modified)
:socket-timeout 5000
:connection-timeout 5000}))))
(defn format-post [{:keys [title author published-date updated-date link contents]}]
(let [text-body (some-> contents
first
:value
(Jsoup/parse)
(.text))
text-body (if (and text-body (< 300 (count text-body)))
(str (subs text-body 0 300) "...")
text-body)]
(str title " | " author " | " (or published-date updated-date) "\n"
text-body "\n"
link)))
(defn subscription-tx [{:subscription/keys [channel last-post-uri] :keys [xt/id ::result]}]
(let [post (-> result :feed :entries first)
uri ((some-fn :uri :link) post)]
(concat [(biff/assoc-some
{:db/doc-type :subscription
:db/op :update
:xt/id id
:subscription/fetched-at :db/now}
:subscription/last-post-uri uri
:subscription/last-modified (get-in result [:response :headers "Last-Modified"])
:subscription/etag (get-in result [:response :headers "Etag"]))]
(when (and (some? uri) (not= uri last-post-uri))
[{:db/doc-type :message
:message/membership :system
:message/channel channel
:message/created-at :db/now
:message/text (format-post post)}]))))
(defn fetch-rss [{:keys [biff/db] :as ctx}]
(biff/submit-tx ctx
(->> (subscriptions-to-update db)
(map #(assoc-result ctx %))
(mapcat subscription-tx))))
(def module
{:tasks [{:task #'fetch-rss
:schedule #(every-n-minutes 5)}]})
Then register the new namespace in your app:
;; src/com/eelchat.clj
(ns com.eelchat
(:require [com.biffweb :as biff]
[com.eelchat.email :as email]
[com.eelchat.app :as app]
[com.eelchat.auth :as auth]
[com.eelchat.home :as home]
+ [com.eelchat.subscriptions :as sub]
[com.eelchat.schema :refer [malli-opts]]
[clojure.java.io :as io]
[clojure.string :as str]
;; ...
(def modules
[app/module
(biff/authentication-module {})
home/module
+ sub/module
schema/module])
Scheduled tasks are only started when the system starts, so for our new task to take effect, you'll need to go to dev/repl.clj and evaluate the (main/refresh) form. (Again, you can alternatively hit Ctrl-C in the terminal and re-run bb dev, but it'll be slower. However sometimes that's a good option if you accidentally bork something and main/refresh doesn't work.)
Once the system starts up, it will run our scheduled task immediately. If you already added a subscription to one of your channels, you should see the latest post in a message. (You may need to refresh the page in case our websocket connection was still being re-established when the message was sent.)
If you add a new subscription and want to trigger the scheduled task immediately without waiting five minutes, you can head over to dev/repl.clj and add (com.eelchat.subscriptions/fetch-rss (get-context)) somewhere within the comment form. Evaluate it to fetch the feeds.
That being said, it would be nice if eelchat fetched new subscriptions right away automatically. Let's add another transaction listener that will do just that whenever there's a new subscription document:
;; src/com/eelchat/app.clj
;; ...
(ns com.eelchat.app
(:require [com.biffweb :as biff :refer [q]]
+ [com.eelchat.subscriptions :as sub]
[com.eelchat.middleware :as mid]
[com.eelchat.ui :as ui]
[clojure.string :as str]
;; ...
+(defn on-new-subscription [{:keys [biff.xtdb/node] :as ctx} tx]
+ (let [db-before (xt/db node {::xt/tx-id (dec (::xt/tx-id tx))})]
+ (doseq [[op & args] (::xt/tx-ops tx)
+ :when (= op ::xt/put)
+ :let [[doc] args]
+ :when (and (contains? doc :subscription/url)
+ (nil? (xt/entity db-before (:xt/id doc))))]
+ (future
+ (biff/submit-tx ctx
+ (sub/subscription-tx (sub/assoc-result ctx doc)))))))
+
+(defn on-tx [ctx tx]
+ (on-new-message ctx tx)
+ (on-new-subscription ctx tx))
+
(defn wrap-community [handler]
(fn [{:keys [biff/db user path-params] :as ctx}]
(if-some [community (xt/entity db (parse-uuid (:id path-params)))]
;; ...
:post new-message
:delete delete-channel}]
["/connect" {:get connect}]]]]
- :on-tx on-new-message})
+ :on-tx on-tx})
(We've used a future because Biff runs all the transaction listeners synchronously. We don't want to potentially hold up other transaction listeners while we're fetching an RSS feed.)
Now if you add a new subscription to one of your channels, the latest post should show up immediately.
This should work fine for now, but what about when you have a lot of users? We might end up fetching a lot of different RSS feeds concurrently. That's not necessarily a problem, but it could be if e.g. we add start doing something computationally intensive as part of our RSS task. We'd like to be able to make sure we don't have too many background tasks running at once.
This is where Biff's in-memory queues come in handy. Whenever we want to fetch an RSS feed, instead of doing it immediately, we can add a job to a queue. The queue will be consumed by a thread pool, and we can pick the amount of concurrency we want by adjusting the size of the thread pool. For example, if we use a thread pool with only one thread in it (which is the default), then our app will never fetch more than one RSS feed at the same time.
Add a :fetch-rss queue like so:
;; src/com/eelchat/subscriptions.clj
;; ...
(map #(assoc-result ctx %))
(mapcat subscription-tx))))
+(defn fetch-rss-consumer [{:keys [biff/job] :as ctx}]
+ (biff/submit-tx ctx
+ (subscription-tx (assoc-result ctx job))))
+
(def module
{:tasks [{:task #'fetch-rss
- :schedule #(every-n-minutes 5)}]})
+ :schedule #(every-n-minutes 5)}]
+ :queues [{:id :fetch-rss
+ :consumer #'fetch-rss-consumer}]})
Queues, like scheduled tasks, are only initialized at startup, so go ahead and refresh the system to make the change take effect (dev/repl.clj -> (main/refresh)). Then we'll modify the com.eelchat.app/on-new-subscription transaction listener to have it submit a job:
;; src/com/eelchat/app.clj
;; ...
(defn on-new-subscription [{:keys [biff.xtdb/node] :as ctx} tx]
(let [db-before (xt/db node {::xt/tx-id (dec (::xt/tx-id tx))})]
(doseq [[op & args] (::xt/tx-ops tx)
:when (= op ::xt/put)
:let [[doc] args]
:when (and (contains? doc :subscription/url)
(nil? (xt/entity db-before (:xt/id doc))))]
- (future
- (biff/submit-tx ctx
- (sub/subscription-tx (sub/assoc-result ctx doc)))))))
+ (biff/submit-job ctx :fetch-rss doc))))
(defn on-tx [ctx tx]
(on-new-message ctx tx)
Voila! Try adding another subscription to one of your channels to ensure everything still works. The latest post from the feed should show up like it did before.
Let's modify our scheduled task to use the queue as well:
;; src/com/eelchat/subscriptions.clj
;; ...
:message/text (format-post post)}]))))
(defn fetch-rss [{:keys [biff/db] :as ctx}]
- (biff/submit-tx ctx
- (->> (subscriptions-to-update db)
- (map #(assoc-result ctx %))
- (mapcat subscription-tx))))
+ (doseq [subscription (subscriptions-to-update db)]
+ (biff/submit-job ctx :fetch-rss subscription)))
There's a slight caveat here: what if our scheduled task adds a bunch of jobs to the queue, and while they're still being processed, someone adds a subscription to their channel? As it is now, there could be a significant lag before the new subscription gets fetched.
We'll fix this by adding a higher priority to jobs for new subscriptions. (The default priority is 10, and lower numbers take higher priority.)
;; src/com/eelchat/app.clj
;; ...
(defn on-new-subscription [{:keys [biff.xtdb/node] :as ctx} tx]
(let [db-before (xt/db node {::xt/tx-id (dec (::xt/tx-id tx))})]
(doseq [[op & args] (::xt/tx-ops tx)
:when (= op ::xt/put)
:let [[doc] args]
:when (and (contains? doc :subscription/url)
(nil? (xt/entity db-before (:xt/id doc))))]
- (biff/submit-job ctx :fetch-rss doc))))
+ (biff/submit-job ctx :fetch-rss (assoc doc :biff/priority 0)))))
(defn on-tx [ctx tx]
(on-new-message ctx tx)