FreshRSS/docs/en/developers/06_Fever_API.md

Fever API implementation

See Mobile access for general aspects of API access. Additionally page about our Google Reader compatible API for another possibility.

RSS clients

There are many RSS clients that support the Fever API, but they seem to understand the Fever API a bit differently. If your favourite client doesn’t work properly with this API, please create an issue and we’ll have a look. But we can only do that for free clients.

Usage & Authentication

Before you can start using this API, you have to enable and setup API access, which is documented here, and then reset the user’s API password.

Then point your mobile application to the fever.php address (e.g. https://freshrss.example.net/api/fever.php).

Compatible clients

App	Platform	License
Fluent Reader	Windows, Linux, macOS	BSD-3-Clause
Fluent Reader lite	Android, iOS	BSD-3-Clause
Read You	Android	GPLv3
Fiery Feeds	iOS	Closed Source
Newsflash	Linux	GPLv3
Unread	iOS	Closed Source
Reeder Classic	iOS	Closed Source
ReadKit	macOS	Closed Source
FreshRSS Python API Client	Python	GPLv3

Features

The following features are implemented:

• fetching categories
• fetching feeds
• fetching RSS items (new, favorites, unread, by_id, by_feed, by_category, since)
• fetching favicons
• setting read marker for item(s)
• setting starred marker for item(s)
• setting read marker for feed
• setting read marker for category
• supports FreshRSS extensions, which use the entry_before_display hook

The following features are not supported:

• Hot Links aka hot as there is nothing in FreshRSS yet that is similar or could be used to simulate it.

Testing and debugging

If this API does not work as expected in your RSS reader, you can test it manually with a tool like Postman.

Configure a POST request to the URL https://freshrss.example.net/api/fever.php?api which should give you the result:

{
	"api_version": 3,
	"auth": 0
}

Great, the base setup seems to work!

Now lets try an authenticated call. Fever uses an api_key, which is the MD5 hash of "$username:$apiPassword". Assuming the user is kevin and the password freshrss, here is a command-line example to compute the resulting api_key

api_key=`echo -n "kevin:freshrss" | md5sum | cut -d' ' -f1`

Add a body to your POST request encoded as form-data and one key named api_key with the value your-password-hash:

curl -s -F "api_key=$api_key" 'https://freshrss.example.net/api/fever.php?api'

This should give:

{
	"api_version": 3,
	"auth": 1,
	"last_refreshed_on_time": "1520013061"
}

Perfect, you’re now authenticated and you can start testing the more advanced features. To do so, change the URL and append the possible API actions to your request parameters. Please refer to the original Fever documentation (also mirrored below) for more information.

Some basic calls are:

• https://freshrss.example.net/api/fever.php?api&items
• https://freshrss.example.net/api/fever.php?api&feeds
• https://freshrss.example.net/api/fever.php?api&groups
• https://freshrss.example.net/api/fever.php?api&unread_item_ids
• https://freshrss.example.net/api/fever.php?api&saved_item_ids
• https://freshrss.example.net/api/fever.php?api&items&since_id=some_id
• https://freshrss.example.net/api/fever.php?api&items&max_id=some_id
• https://freshrss.example.net/api/fever.php?api&mark=item&as=read&id=some_id
• https://freshrss.example.net/api/fever.php?api&mark=item&as=unread&id=some_id

Replace some_id with a real ID from your freshrss_username_entry database.

Debugging

If nothing helps and your client is still misbehaving, you can add the following lines to the beginning of the fever.api file to determine the cause of the problems:

file_put_contents(__DIR__ . '/fever.log', $_SERVER['HTTP_USER_AGENT'] . ': ' . json_encode($_REQUEST) . PHP_EOL, FILE_APPEND);

Then use your RSS client to query the API and afterwards check the file fever.log.

Official Fever API reference (mirrored)

The original Fever API documentation used to live at https://feedafever.com/api but is no longer online. As the archived copy may itself disappear over time, its content is mirrored below (converted from HTML to Markdown) for reference, with only the heading levels adjusted to fit this page.

API Public Beta

Fever 1.14 introduces the new Fever API. This API is in public beta and currently supports basic syncing and consuming of content. A subsequent update will allow for adding, editing and deleting feeds and groups. The API’s primary focus is maintaining a local cache of the data in a remote Fever installation.

I am soliciting feedback from interested developers and as such the beta API may expand to reflect that feedback. The current API is incomplete but stable. Existing features may be expanded on but will not be removed or modified. New features may be added.

Authentication

Without further ado, the Fever API endpoint URL looks like:

http://yourdomain.com/fever/?api

All requests must be authenticated with a POSTed api_key. The value of api_key should be the md5 checksum of the Fever accounts email address and password concatenated with a colon. An example of a valid value for api_key using PHP’s native md5() function:

$email  = 'you@yourdomain.com';
$pass   = 'b3stp4s4wd3v4';
$api_key = md5($email.':'.$pass);

A user may specify that https be used to connect to their Fever installation for additional security but you should not assume that all Fever installations support https.

The default response is a JSON object containing two members:

• api_version contains the version of the API responding (positive integer)
• auth whether the request was successfully authenticated (boolean integer)

The API can also return XML by passing xml as the optional value of the api argument like so:

http://yourdomain.com/fever/?api=xml

The top level XML element is named response.

The response to each successfully authenticated request will have auth set to 1 and include at least one additional member:

• last_refreshed_on_time contains the time of the most recently refreshed (not updated) feed (Unix timestamp/integer)

Read

When reading from the Fever API you add arguments to the query string of the API endpoint URL. If you attempt to POST these arguments (and their optional values) Fever will not recognize the request.

Groups

http://yourdomain.com/fever/?api&groups

A request with the groups argument will return two additional members:

• groups contains an array of group objects
• feeds_groups contains an array of feeds_group objects

A group object has the following members:

• id (positive integer)
• title (utf-8 string)

The feeds_group object is documented under “Feeds/Groups Relationships.”

The “Kindling” super group is not included in this response and is composed of all feeds with an is_spark equal to 0. The “Sparks” super group is not included in this response and is composed of all feeds with an is_spark equal to 1.

Feeds

http://yourdomain.com/fever/?api&feeds

A request with the feeds argument will return two additional members:

• feeds contains an array of group objects
• feeds_groups contains an array of feeds_group objects

A feed object has the following members:

• id (positive integer)
• favicon_id (positive integer)
• title (utf-8 string)
• url (utf-8 string)
• site_url (utf-8 string)
• is_spark (boolean integer)
• last_updated_on_time (Unix timestamp/integer)

The feeds_group object is documented under “Feeds/Groups Relationships.”

The “All Items” super feed is not included in this response and is composed of all items from all feeds that belong to a given group. For the “Kindling” super group and all user created groups the items should be limited to feeds with an is_spark equal to 0. For the “Sparks” super group the items should be limited to feeds with an is_spark equal to 1.

Feeds/Groups Relationships

A request with either the groups or feeds arguments will return an additional member:

A feeds_group object has the following members:

• group_id (positive integer)
• feed_ids (string/comma-separated list of positive integers)

Favicons

http://yourdomain.com/fever/?api&favicons

A request with the favicons argument will return one additional member:

• favicons contains an array of favicon objects

A favicon object has the following members:

• id (positive integer)
• data (base64 encoded image data; prefixed by image type)

An example data value:

image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAObm5gAAACH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAICRAEAOw==

The data member of a favicon object can be used with the data: protocol to embed an image in CSS or HTML. A PHP/HTML example:

echo '<img src="data:'.$favicon['data'].'">';

Items

http://yourdomain.com/fever/?api&items

A request with the items argument will return two additional members:

• items contains an array of item objects
• total_items contains the total number of items stored in the database (added in API version 2)

An item object has the following members:

• id (positive integer)
• feed_id (positive integer)
• title (utf-8 string)
• author (utf-8 string)
• html (utf-8 string)
• url (utf-8 string)
• is_saved (boolean integer)
• is_read (boolean integer)
• created_on_time (Unix timestamp/integer)

Most servers won’t have enough memory allocated to PHP to dump all items at once. Three optional arguments control determine the items included in the response.

• Use the since_id argument with the highest id of locally cached items to request 50 additional items. Repeat until the items array in the response is empty.
• Use the max_id argument with the lowest id of locally cached items (or 0 initially) to request 50 previous items. Repeat until the items array in the response is empty. (added in API version 2)
• Use the with_ids argument with a comma-separated list of item ids to request (a maximum of 50) specific items. (added in API version 2)

Hot Links

http://yourdomain.com/fever/?api&links

A request with the links argument will return one additional member:

• links contains an array of link objects

A link object has the following members:

• id (positive integer)
• feed_id (positive integer) only use when is_item equals 1
• item_id (positive integer) only use when is_item equals 1
• temperature (positive float)
• is_item (boolean integer)
• is_local (boolean integer) used to determine if the source feed and favicon should be displayed
• is_saved (boolean integer) only use when is_item equals 1
• title (utf-8 string)
• url (utf-8 string)
• item_ids (string/comma-separated list of positive integers)

When requesting hot links you can control the range and offset by specifying a length of days for each as well as a page to fetch additional hot links. A request with just the links argument is equivalent to:

http://yourdomain.com/fever/?api&links&offset=0&range=7&page=1

Or the first page (page=1) of Hot links for the past week (range=7) starting now (offset=0).

Link Caveats

Fever calculates Hot link temperatures in real-time. The API assumes you have an up-to-date local cache of items, feeds and favicons with which to construct a meaningful Hot view. Because they are ephemeral Hot links should not be cached in the same relational manner as items, feeds, groups and favicons.

Because Fever saves items and not individual links you can only "save" a Hot link when is_item equals 1.

Sync

The unread_item_ids and saved_item_ids arguments can be used to keep your local cache synced with the remote Fever installation.

http://yourdomain.com/fever/?api&unread_item_ids

A request with the unread_item_ids argument will return one additional member:

• unread_item_ids (string/comma-separated list of positive integers)

http://yourdomain.com/fever/?api&saved_item_ids

A request with the saved_item_ids argument will return one additional member:

• saved_item_ids (string/comma-separated list of positive integers)

One of these members will be returned as appropriate when marking an item as read, unread, saved, or unsaved and when marking a feed or group as read.

Because groups and feeds will be limited in number compared to items, they should be synced by comparing an array of locally cached feed or group ids to an array of feed or group ids returned by their respective API request.

Write

The public beta of the API does not provide a way to add, edit or delete feeds or groups but you can mark items, feeds and groups as read and save or unsave items. You can also unread recently read items. When writing to the Fever API you add arguments to the POST data you submit to the API endpoint URL.

Adding unread_recently_read=1 to your POST data will mark recently read items as unread.

You can update an individual item by adding the following three arguments to your POST data:

• mark=item
• as=? where ? is replaced with read, saved or unsaved
• id=? where ? is replaced with the id of the item to modify

Marking a feed or group as read is similar but requires one additional argument to prevent marking new, unreceived items as read:

• mark=? where ? is replaced with feed or group
• as=read
• id=? where ? is replaced with the id of the feed or group to modify
• before=? where ? is replaced with the Unix timestamp of the the local client’s most recent items API request

You can mark the “Kindling” super group (and the “Sparks” super group) as read by adding the following four arguments to your POST data:

• mark=group
• as=read
• id=0
• before=? where ? is replaced with the Unix timestamp of the the local client’s last items API request

Similarly you can mark just the “Sparks” super group as read by adding the following four arguments to your POST data:

• mark=group
• as=read
• id=-1
• before=? where ? is replaced with the Unix timestamp of the the local client’s last items API request

Fever, its website and all related files are copyright © 2008-2023 Shaun Inman.

Credits

This plugin was inspired by the tinytinyrss-fever-plugin.