Freshrss: Adding FreshRSS as a feed reader to Firefox

[marienfressinaud]

See https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Adding_feed_readers_to_Firefox
It seems easy to implement

[aledeg]

And most important, useful

[marienfressinaud]

Finally I'm not sure we should add this directly to FreshRSS:

• it implies feed_controller::addAction() function works without the isPost verification (see CSRF vulnerability https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cross-site_request_forgery). It could work with a token, but what if the user does not want to use token system?
• there is no possibility to unregister an application
• it works only on Firefox and we cannot test if FreshRSS is already registered. I have tried isContentHandlerRegistered function but it does not work :(

I tried code from https://github.com/feedbin/support/issues/412 (feedbin)

Another solution could be to create a page on freshrss.org just to add FreshRSS to Firefox by asking an url. On this page we will be able to give all information we want:

• "You are not using Firefox"
• "Be careful! To unregister FreshRSS you will have to do it manually"

[aledeg]

No matter what we do, there is few things that need to be fixed in Minz on the URL generation. Please check my comments on the pull request if it is not done already.

[marienfressinaud]

Oh yes, sorry! I think it's ok to use "?" instead of "/?" in Minz::Url, I don't see any problem we can have with that…

[aledeg]

Should I do it or do you want to first change that on the framework?

[marienfressinaud]

I will do it but after 0.7.1 will be released

[aledeg]

I was thinking of the registration and I thought that if we want to support that feature, we need to find a way to register a feed with a get method.
Even if there is no button in the application, the application itself needs to support adding feeds from get method. Maybe that will be solved with the API

[marienfressinaud]

We can imagine to ask confirmation if we receive a GET request :)

[marienfressinaud]

I have implemented a bookmarklet. A GET request ask for confirmation and if we have already subscribe to the feed, we are redirecting to configure page

[subic]

Sorry to comment on this old issue but it is the first google result for "FreshRSS firefox subscribe" so this would have helped me and perhaps will help someone else. If you prefer to add your installation to Firefox subscription service instead of using the bookmarklet there is a way to add it manually.

It is described here but basically:

1. open about:config
2. search for "browser.contentHandlers.types." and note the highest number following the returned strings (ie if yuo see browser.contentHandlers.types.1.something up to browser.contentHandlers.types.5.somethingelse etc. the highest number is 5). Your contentHandler will have to have a free number so just pick one higher than currently registered (you would chose six in above example).
3. You will have to add three new strings to your about config (replace %NUMBER% with the number from previous step and FRESHRSS.URL with your installation address):

Preference name:
browser.contentHandlers.types.%NUMBER%.title
Value: 
FreshRSS
(or any other name you would like to use ("My feeds" or anything really))

Preference name:
browser.contentHandlers.types.%NUMBER%.type
Value: 
application/vnd.mozilla.maybe.feed
(do not change this value)

Preference name:
browser.contentHandlers.types.%NUMBER%.uri
Value: 
http://FRESHRSS.URL/i/?c=feed&a=add&url_rss=%s
(replace FRESHRSS.URL with your domain and change to https if you use it)

Restart Firefox and you should be able to subscribe to sites which provide a feed link using the Firefox built in "Subscribe" button. Just select the name you set under the first Preference name from the drop-down (you can also make it default with the checkbox) and you will be redirected to FreshRSS subscription settings (you must be logged in).

Hope this is clear enough, otherwise consult https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/Firefox/Releases/2/Adding_feed_readers_to_Firefox for a more in depth reference. It might also be helpful to include this somewhere in the docs if the maintainers find it useful.

[Alkarex]

Thanks @subic , this is some interesting documentation to have. It is already good there, but if you have a bit more motivation, it would be great with a pull request to https://github.com/FreshRSS/documentation , which is used to build http://doc.freshrss.org/ (there is not much yet, especially in English, but it is slowly getting richer) :-)

[subic]

Hi, I've opened an issue (Issue #1354 ) regarding some bookmarklet improvements that includes a suggestion for adding the info to the FreshRSS iteslf. I'll also submit the pull for documentation in the following week.

[mdemoss]

Before I saw this thread, I made this commit: https://github.com/mdemoss/FreshRSS/commit/3e4bc30a9c444e1a6731db39147d02b5806ea516 for a "Click to add to Firefox as a reader" link.

@marienfressinaud Do the concerns about CSRF still hold true in the current version? Maybe there wasn't any user interaction before adding a feed in the previous version?

[primaeval]

The uri in @subic 's very useful post should be
http://FRESHRSS.URL/i/?c=feed&a=add&url_rss=%s

I really wish this could be automated. FreshRSS is superb apart from easily adding new feeds.

[subic]

You're absolutely right, I have edited my previous post. The /f/ was an artifact of copy pasting...