+++
date = "2019-12-11T20:52:38+00:00"
publishdate = "2023-12-29T07:08:55+00:00"
title = "News Aggregator"
slug = "news-aggregator"
author = "Thedro"
tags = ["golang"]
type = "projects"
summary =  "Here's a site that's been in my personal use for while. It's a local news aggregator that gathers stories from around The Bahamas and creates a tight newspaper esque view."
draft =  ""
syntax =  ""
toc =  ""
updated =  ""
+++

{{< image source="/images/news-aggregator.png" >}}
Mobile view of the front page.
{{< /image >}}

[Demo](https://www.bahrep.com)

Here's a site that's been in my personal use for while. It's a local news
aggregator that gathers stories from around The Bahamas and creates a tight
newspaper esque view. The stories are gathered using old school
[`RSS`.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RSS)

This website is generated using a simple
{{< sidenote mark="static" set="right" >}}Static site generators are perfect for
news sites.{{< /sidenote>}} site generator written in [Go](https://go.dev/doc/).
I've hacked together my own static site generator after taking a peek at both
[Hugo](https://github.com/gohugoio/hugo) and
[Openring's](https://git.sr.ht/~sircmpwn/openring) source code. The frontend
does not use any frameworks and is implemented with a nested
{{< sidenote mark="[flexbox](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Learn/CSS/CSS_layout/Flexbox)" set="left" >}}Naturally,
this started with a
[grid](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Learn/CSS/CSS_layout/Grids)
approach, but slowly became worried about cross browser
support.{{< /sidenote >}} based approach to obtain a complex
{{< sideimage mark="layout." set="right" source="/images/news-aggregator-desktop.png" >}}Desktop
Layout{{< /sideimage >}}

Automatic deployment happens with a simple
[`POSIX`](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/POSIX) compliant shell script. The `RSS`
fetch process is decoupled from the website generation process, allowing for
super fast site regeneration.

Internal web pages are generated and passed through
[`monolith`](https://github.com/Y2Z/monolith) to
{{< sidenote mark="compile" set="left" >}}Monolith is a program written in
[Rust](https://www.rust-lang.org/learn) that reduces a web page to a single
`HTML` file.{{< /sidenote >}} all assets into a single file. This file is served
in one {{< sidenote mark="request." set="right" >}}Encoding everything into a
single file is not always a good decision.{{< /sidenote >}} That is crazy ---
but here's the result of a speed test. In a practical sense, the grade should be
closer to `F` since all data is encoded into an _unoptimized_ document.

{{< image source="/images/bahrep-speed-test.png" >}} Speed Test Results
{{< /image >}}

---

1. Note: The source is nothing to write home about but I'll be adding a link to
   it once my laziness subsides.