In lieu of visiting individual sites for interests that I follow, I use RSS feeds to quickly identify articles that may be of interest. It’s a way of quickly weeding out what I don’t want to read or see, so I can focus on what matters. There are many different RSS feed readers. I happen to use NetNewsWire.

But some websites do not have an RSS feed. For example, the Aviation Safety Network does not have a feed. The site presents listing of aviation accidents and incidents. Fortunately, there are ways of parsing the site, and using that data to construct a feed. This article outlines a method that involves installing and self-hosting RSS-Bridge, constructing a CSS selector bridge to parse the content, and how to serve the newly-constructed feed.

RSS-Bridge is an open-source self-hosted system for creating RSS for sites that do not have a feed. Use RSS-Bridge’s CSS Selector Bridge to create an Atom feed of Aviation Safety Network occurrence records and their narratives.

Docker installation

Create a directory for RSS-Bridge and its persistent configuration:

sudo install -d -m 0755 /opt/rss-bridge/config
cd /opt/rss-bridge

Create the Compose file:

sudo nano /opt/rss-bridge/compose.yaml

Add:

services:
  rss-bridge:
    image: rssbridge/rss-bridge:latest
    container_name: rss-bridge
    restart: unless-stopped
    ports:
      - "4242:80"
    volumes:
      - ./config:/config

Save the file and start RSS-Bridge:

cd /opt/rss-bridge
sudo docker compose up -d

Confirm that the container is running:

sudo docker compose ps

RSS-Bridge should now be available at:

http://SERVER-IP:4242/

For example:

http://192.168.5.109:4242/

The mapping 4242:80 publishes the container’s internal web server on port 4242 of the Debian machine.

Create the Aviation Safety Network feed

Open RSS-Bridge in a browser and find CSS Selector Bridge.

Enter the following settings.

Site URL

In Site URL: Home page with latest articles, enter:

https://aviation-safety.net/

Article selector

In Selector for article links or their parent elements, enter:

td.list a[href*="/wikibase/"]

This matches the links to individual Aviation Safety Network occurrence records.

URL filter

In Pattern for site URLs to keep in feed, enter:

/wikibase/

This prevents unrelated links from appearing in the feed.

Narrative selector

In Selector to expand each article’s content, enter:

span[lang="en-US"]

RSS-Bridge will open each occurrence page and extract the narrative contained in that element.

Remaining settings

Leave Content cleanup and Title cleanup empty initially.

Set Limit to:

10

This limits the number of occurrence pages retrieved whenever the feed is requested. A modest limit reduces the load placed on Aviation Safety Network.

Leave the thumbnail options unchecked unless images are wanted.

Generate the Atom feed

Submit the CSS Selector Bridge configuration. RSS-Bridge displays a preview page with several output formats.

Right-click Atom and select Copy Link or Copy Link Address. Left-clicking Atom may download the XML document instead.

The copied address is the subscription URL. It will resemble:

http://SERVER-IP:4242/?action=display&bridge=CssSelectorBridge&home_page=...

and end with:

&format=Atom

Add this complete URL to the RSS reader.

Do not subscribe to the downloaded XML file. A downloaded file is only a snapshot and will not update; the RSS-Bridge URL generates a fresh feed whenever the reader requests it.

Verify the feed

Test the URL from the Debian machine:

curl -L "FULL-ATOM-URL" | head

The result should begin with XML similar to:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<feed xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom">

The document should also contain <entry> elements. Each entry should have an Aviation Safety Network occurrence title, a link to its /wikibase/ page, and its narrative.

Network access

A feed reader on the local network can use the Debian server’s LAN address:

http://192.168.5.109:4242/...

Do not use localhost unless the feed reader runs on the same Debian machine. On another device, localhost refers to that device rather than to the RSS-Bridge server.

Cloud-based readers cannot reach a private address such as 192.168.5.109. To use a cloud reader, RSS-Bridge must be made available through a public hostname, preferably behind an HTTPS reverse proxy.

Routine management

View the container status:

cd /opt/rss-bridge
sudo docker compose ps

View recent logs:

sudo docker compose logs --tail=100 rss-bridge

Restart RSS-Bridge:

sudo docker compose restart

Update to the latest Docker Hub image:

sudo docker compose pull
sudo docker compose up -d

Stop RSS-Bridge:

sudo docker compose down

Start it again:

sudo docker compose up -d

The persistent configuration remains under:

/opt/rss-bridge/config