Improve RSS Feeds by adding <category> tags for LinkAce links Tags

[tzinm]

Description

I have been testing LinkAce and found the Public Feeds feature ver useful for sharing saved links with others. Since I have a Mastodon account, I would like to automatically post public links from LinkAce as toots.

To achieve this, I plan to use the EchoFeed.app. A tool that provides variables based on the XML tags included in the feed, allowing to format toots as needed.

Variables available in the EchoFeed service echo creation panel

Feature Request:

EchoFeed allows customizing the content that will be published. In my case, I plan to do the following:

1. Add a custom hastag. This can be set directly in the EchoFeed panel. For example, use #linkace as a custom tag in my Mastodon profile, making it easier to filter all toots coming from LinkAce.
2. Include the tags assigned in LinkAce. Ideally, the hastags in the toot should also include the tags assigned to the saved links in LinkAce, in addition to the custom hashtag from the previous step.

Currently, the feed templates used by LinkAce do not include the tags assigned to the links.

Example XML feed of LinkAce demo instance:

<feed>
  <title>LinkAce Links</title>
  <link rel="self" type="application/atom+xml" href="https://demo.linkace.org/guest/links/feed"/>
  <updated>2025-02-19T18:06:37+00:00</updated>
  <id>https://demo.linkace.org/guest/links/feed</id>
  <entry>
	<id>https://demo.linkace.org/links/88</id>
	<title type="text">
Cloudhiker - Discover the most interesting, weird and awesome websites of the Internet
</title>
	<link rel="alternate" href="https://cloudhiker.net"/>
	<link rel="via" type="application/atom+xml" href="https://demo.linkace.org/links/88"/>
	<author>
		<name> Demouser</name>
	</author>
	<summary type="text">
Cloudhiker is a collection of anything interesting, weird or astonishing; websites of exceptional quality, sites to kill time or learn something new. You won't find any clickbait Buzzfeed stuff or low-effort blog articles here.
</summary>
	<updated>2024-09-29T21:28:36+00:00</updated>
  </entry>
</feed>

How could this be implemented?

According to RFC 4827, which specifies the Atom format, section 4.1.2 outlines the elements that can be included within eacth entry. Among these, the <category> tag appears to be the most appropriate. It could be usesful to add <category> tag to each tag assigned to the links in LinkAce to the feed templates

The following example is the feed corresponding to the #herramientas tag from my Mastodon account; https://masto.es/@tzinm/tagged/herramientas.rss. It includes as many <category> tags as there are tags in the toot.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<rss version="2.0" xmlns:webfeeds="http://webfeeds.org/rss/1.0" xmlns:media="http://search.yahoo.com/mrss/">
  <channel>
    <title>tzinm</title>
    <description>Publicaciones públicas de @[email protected]</description>
    <link>https://masto.es/@tzinm/tagged/herramientas</link>
    <image>
      <url>https://masto.es/system/accounts/avatars/113/782/702/970/134/511/original/807e0e82e5f0af5c.jpeg</url>
      <title>tzinm</title>
      <link>https://masto.es/@tzinm/tagged/herramientas</link>
    </image>
    <lastBuildDate>Mon, 17 Feb 2025 19:59:00 +0000</lastBuildDate>
    <webfeeds:icon>https://masto.es/system/accounts/avatars/113/782/702/970/134/511/original/807e0e82e5f0af5c.jpeg</webfeeds:icon>
    <generator>Mastodon v4.3.3</generator>
    <item>
      <guid isPermaLink="true">https://masto.es/@tzinm/114020996927656946</guid>
      <link>https://masto.es/@tzinm/114020996927656946</link>
      <pubDate>Mon, 17 Feb 2025 19:59:00 +0000</pubDate>
      <description>&lt;p&gt;Recientemente, me he topado con dos &lt;a href="https://masto.es/tags/herramientas" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag"&gt;#&lt;span&gt;herramientas&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/a&gt; que pueden ser de utilidad para agregar nuevas fuentes en nuestros lectores de feeds &lt;a href="https://masto.es/tags/rss" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag"&gt;#&lt;span&gt;rss&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;1. [Open RSS](&lt;a href="https://openrss.org/guides/how-open-rss-feeds-work" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" translate="no"&gt;&lt;span class="invisible"&gt;https://&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="ellipsis"&gt;openrss.org/guides/how-open-rs&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="invisible"&gt;s-feeds-work&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/a&gt;) - Ofrece feeds rss de webs que no ofrecen el suyo propio.&lt;br /&gt;2. [RSS Lookup](&lt;a href="https://www.rsslookup.com/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" translate="no"&gt;&lt;span class="invisible"&gt;https://www.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=""&gt;rsslookup.com/&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="invisible"&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/a&gt;) - Permite buscar feeds rss de una web.&lt;/p&gt;</description>
      <category>rss</category>
      <category>herramientas</category>
    </item>
  </channel>
</rss>

---

Would it be possible to consider this enhancement in future updates?

Thanks for the great work on LinkAce! 🚀

[Kovah]

That's a good idea. First thing that comes to my mind is if lists should be part of this, too. 🤔

[tzinm]

Thanks for your response! I hadn't considered lists before, as I'm still new to LinkAce and haven't explored all its features yet.

From what I've read in the documentation, I undrestood (misunderstood) lists as a way to group tags. Whan creating a list, you can select which tags to inlcude, and the list will automatically populate with links that have those tags. Essentially, it acts as a saved filter rathern than assigning manually new links to a list.

I see three possile approaches:

1. Consider only tags
2. Consider only lists
3. Consider both tags and lists

Te first option makes the most sense to me, since tags inherently categorize links.

What do you think?