Pubsubhubbub library for NodeJs

Question

I have a system where various rss feeds are added. I want to follow the content and be notified when new content is added in the feeds without having to check them one by one.

I found out there is a pubsubhubbub protocol and that publishers can use various hubs which implement this protocol in their feeds. This is how I found out about superfeedr and I'm trying to work with their XMPP API. I installed their nodejs library and made a few subscribe tests that worked fine.

• Is it possible to use the node superfeedr module to subscribe to a feed that doesn't use superfeedr? For example I found one that has:

  link rel='hub' href='http://pubsubhubbub.appspot.com/'
  

• Do I have to handle each hub separately or I can just send them the same requests based on the protocol?

Answer 1

Alex, I created Superfeedr.

Yes, of course it is possible to subscribe to a feed that doesn't use Superfeedr. Superfeedr acts as a default hub. You can add any feed, and you should get notifications for it. The only difference is that you may see delays. We poll feeds every 15 minutes, so, unless there are strong caches, you should see messages no later than 15 minutes after they've been published.

2 and 3 are probably not relevant given 1. However, I believe there are a couple other PubSubHubbub libraries, but they all require that your endpoint is outside the firewall... and all of them will only work for feeds that use the pubsubhubbub protocol. Even though your application will use each hub separately, the code should be the same, so that's transparent for you.

I hope this helps.