FreshRSS is an open-source news aggregator supporting RSS/ATOM/WebSub and also Web scraping.
The market segment is mostly self-hosting, although multiple user accounts are supported. It is supposed to be installed on a modest server (mostly, but not limited to, Linux) and can be accessed through a Web UI and an API.
It is written in PHP to make it easy to deploy and easy to contribute to.
More information can be found in README and in the documentation published at https://freshrss.github.io/FreshRSS/en/
.github/instructions/ contain the instructions that primarily match filename patterns..github/skills/ contain the skills to achieve higher-level goals, potentially combining multiple instructions.AGENTS.md is the entry point description for AI coding agents and contributors, referencing other documents such as instructions and skills.app/Controllers/ – Controllers extend FreshRSS_ActionController, named as {name}Controller.php with class FreshRSS_{name}_Controllerapp/Models/ – Domain models extend Minz_Model.
*DAO.php (base or MySQL), *DAOSQLite.php (SQLite), *DAOPGSQL.php (PostgreSQL)app/views/{controller}/ – View templates are .phtml files mixing PHP and HTMLapp/views/helpers/ – Reusable view elements with $this->partial('name')lib/core-extensions/ or extensions/ – FreshRSS extensionslib/Minz/ – Core framework: routing, sessions, translations, extensions, PDO abstractionlib/lib_rss.php – Contain spl_autoload_register and other global functionsp/ – Public Web root. Only the content of this folder should be exposed if possible (p/ should not be visible in the public URL)
p/i/ path should be access controlled. The main entry point is p/i/index.phpp/api/greader.php – Primary API for mobile clientsp/api/pshb.php – Receive realtime pushes via WebSubp/themes/ – UI themesconstants.php overridden in constants.local.phpconfig.default.php overridden in data/config.phpconfig-user.default.php overridden in data/users/{username}/config.phpℹ Access via
FreshRSS_Context::systemConf()andFreshRSS_Context::userConf()
Three database backends supported: SQLite, PostgreSQL, MySQL/MariaDB. The SQL differences are implemented through inheritance:
// Base DAO with common queries
class FreshRSS_EntryDAO extends Minz_ModelPdo { }
// Database-specific overrides
class FreshRSS_EntryDAOSQLite extends FreshRSS_EntryDAO { }
class FreshRSS_EntryDAOPGSQL extends FreshRSS_EntryDAO { }
A factory pattern selects the correct DAO, e.g.:
FreshRSS_Factory::createEntryDao();
Important: in database, VARCHAR/TEXT fields are HTML-encoded, except attributes fields, which contain JSON, and which sub-strings are not HTML-encoded.
ℹ Recommended before committing
# Runs all tests: PHPUnit, PHPCS, PHPStan, typos
make test-all
# Auto-fix all trivial issues: whitespace, RTL CSS, translations
make fix-all
# See a list of commands:
make help
CI/CD is defined in .github/workflows/tests.yml
A Dev Container is available under .devcontainer/.
ℹ Check Docker documentation.
There are scripts in cli/ for admin tasks, such as:
./cli/list-users.php
ℹ Check CLI documentation.
When possible, it is best to run as Web server user:
sudo -u www-data cli/actualize-user.php --user alice
or at least re-apply the file permissions after CLI operations:
cli/access-permissions.sh