Add rss-cli
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rss-cli.html
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<div class="post-2-1">
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<div>
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<p>So if you actually do read this site often, you may have noticed that there
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is now an RSS feed. Its on the main posts page, up at the top right. RSS is a
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very interesting technology. It was designed with the intent, it seems, to
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connect the whole internet in one nice syndication protocol that was easy to
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understand and use. And it really delivered on that! It just seems to have not
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caught on as much as once thought. However, I still use <a href="https://newsboat.org">
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newsboat</a> for most of my youtube and other feeds, and it works great.
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Despite being 'dead', most things support it (or you can find a
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<a href="https://github.com/RSS-Bridge/rss-bridge">tool</a> to make it
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work).</p>
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<p>With that said, it seems like it would be great to automate stuff with it,
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unix style. Pipes, bash scripting, the whole deal. However, I didn't really
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find anything that fit my needs. I just wanted a light, simple to use program
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that could extract things from an rss feed and spit it out, to be further
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processed by something like awk or something. Alas, with my searching I found
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nothing. So pulled up a tmux session, put on some music at full volume, and one
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weekend later we now have rss-cli!</p>
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</div>
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<div class="col-md">
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<figure>
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<a href="https://validator.w3.org/feed/check.cgi?url=https%3A//www.clortox.com/feed/"><img src="../img/valid-rss-rogers.png"
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class="fig-img"></img></a>
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<figcaption>This site hosts a <a href="https://www.clortox.com/feed/">
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valid rss</a> feed.</figcaption>
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</figure>
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</div>
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</div>
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<div class="post-1-2">
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<div class="col-md">
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<figure>
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<a href="https://github.com/Clortox/rss-cli">
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<img src="../img/github.png"
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class="fig-img"></img></a>
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<figcaption>You can view the code I'm describing yourself on github
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(above) and <a href="https://git.clortox.com/?p=rss-cli.git;a=summary">
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this site</a>.</figcaption>
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</figure>
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</div>
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<div>
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<h4>How does it work?</h4>
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<p>rss-cli uses the very fast c++ library <a href="http://rapidxml.sourceforge.net">
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rapidxml</a> to parse the RSS feed. Performance tends to be around 3ms total
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execution time for very large RSS feeds (~30 items) on my i7-9750H. I was
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getting about 10ms on a raspberry pi 4 for the same feed.</p>
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<p>rss-cli will parse the rss file, which is identified by a URI. A URI is
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used, because the program uses libcurl to fetch rss feeds off the internet,
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however file:///some/rss/feed.rss is also valid for local files. Once the file
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is grabbed, it is parsed by rapidxml, then kept in memory. When a specific
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attribute is needed, it is fetched as needed. This lazy-loading approach keeps
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execution times low, as often you will not need the entire feed, you will
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probably only be extracting key bits of information for your next program to
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parse.</p>
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<p>All of the meat of rss-cli is in the rss_utils namespace. I placed this
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here, along with an rss_utils::rss object for interacting with the rss feed, so
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that moving rss.cpp and rss.hpp to your own project can be as easy as possible.
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rss_utils also contains a rss_utils::item, which represenets the <item> tags.
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These item objects are stored in a std::vector, so that your program can easily
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iterate through them.</p>
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<p>Both rss_utils::rss and rss_utils::item contain clone functions, the big 3,
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and accessor functions for all of the possible associated elements. For
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example, if you want to access an rss feed's title, you would call:</p>
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<blockquote>std::string rss_utils::rss::getTitle() const</blockquote>
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<p>All responses are given as std::string, to allow for the widest
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compatability possible. Each time one of these functions are called, it will
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search the document for attribute, and return an empty string
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(std::string("")) if nothing is found. Neither of the classes ever throw
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exceptions. rss_utils::rss also provides a isOk() function for checking if the
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rss feed was valid. If isOk() returns false, all accessor functions will return
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empty strings. When attempting to get items while isOk() is false, an empty
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std::vector<rss_utils::items> will be returned</p>
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</div>
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</div>
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<div class="row no-gutters">
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<div class="col-sm">
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<h4>How do you use rss-cli?</h4>
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<p>rss-cli provides the --help flag to display all of the optiosn it will
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accept. There are alot of options, but this is because each option corresponds
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to a field in the RSS 2.0 Spec. Here is a full version of the help menu (as of
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7-26-21):</p>
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<blockquote class="code-block">Usage: rss-cli [-u FEED_URI] [CHANNEL FLAGS] [-i ITEM_INDEX] [ITEM FLAGS]
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Options:
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Required Options:
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[-u, --uri] URI URI of the rss stream
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Channel information:
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[-t, --title] Get title of channel
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[-l, --link] Get link to channel
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[-d, --description] Get description of channel
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[-L, --language] Get language code of channel
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[-m, --webmaster] Get webMaster's email
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[-c, --copyright] Get copyright
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[-p, --pubdate] Get publishing date
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[-e, --managingeditor] Get managing editor
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[-g, --generator] Get generator of this feed
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[-o, --docs] Get link to RSS documentation
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[-w, --ttl] Get ttl, time that channel can be
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cached before being updated
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[-b, --builddate] Get last time the channel's
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content changed
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[-Q, --imageurl] Get channel image URL
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[-I, --imagetitle] Get image title, same as ALT in html
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[-E, --imagelink] Get link to site, image will act as a link
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[-W, --imagewidth] Get width of image
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[-H, --imageheight] Get height of image
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[-D, --clouddomain] Get domain of feed update service
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[-P, --cloudport] Get port of feed update service
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[-A, --cloudpath] Get path to access for feed update service
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[-R, --cloudregister] Get register procedure for feed update service
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[-O, --cloudprotocol] Get protocol feed update service uses
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[-i, --item] INDEX Provide index of item to display
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If no index is provided, assume the first
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item in the feed. All following flags will
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be parsed as item options, till another
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item is provided
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Item options:
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[-t, --title] Get title of item
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[-l, --link] Get link
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[-d, --description] Get description
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[-a, --author] Get author
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[-C, --category] Get category list
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[-f, --comments] Get link to comments
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[-G, --guid] Get GUID
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[-p, --pubdate] Get publishing date
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[-s, --source] Get source of item
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[-U, --enclosureurl] Get enclosure URL
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[-T, --enclosuretype] Get enclosure MIME type
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[-K, --enclosurelength]Get enclosure length, in bytes
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General options:
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[-h, --help] Show this message
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For more information, refer to the RSS 2.0 documentation
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https://validator.w3.org/feed/docs/rss2.html
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</blockquote>
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<p>Breaking this down, we first need the -u flag to say where to get the RSS
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feed. Once we have that, we can pass flags to grab everything we need. The
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Channel information flags have to be passed <i>before</i> the item options.
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Once the -i flag has been passed, all following options must be item options,
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and will be applied to that item. If -h is passed anywhere, the program will
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display the help message and quit.</p>
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<p>The slowest part of the program will be fetching the file using libcurl,
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therefore if you plan to do several operations on the same feed, I recommend
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downloading the file first and using file:// to tell rss-cli where the file
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is.</p>
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<p>All options are also displayed in the order they are listed in --help. This
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means that even if you run rss-cli with:</p>
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<blockquote>rss-cli -u file:///my/local/rss.rss --description --link --title</blockquote>
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<p>The output will still be:</p>
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<blockquote class="code-block">RSS Feed Title
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Feed link
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Feed description
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</blockquote>
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<p>This makes output predictable and easy for other programs to understand. If
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a empty line is encountered, then it can be assumed the requested tag is not in
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the feed. This same concept applies to each item.</p>
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</div>
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</div>
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<div class="row no-gutters">
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<div class="col-sm-10">
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<h4>Possible use cases</h4>
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<h5>Get quick headlines in bashrc</h5>
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<p>Grab headlines from BBC and show the top three in your bash rc</p>
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<blockquote>
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echo $(rss-cli -u http://feeds.bbci.co.uk/news/world/us_and_canada/rss.xml \
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-i0 -td -i1 -td -i2 -td)
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</blockquote>
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<h5>Get weather and place into a file</h5>
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<p>Grab todays weather and put it in a file, for logging</p>
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<blockquote>
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rss-cli -u http://www.rssweather.com/zipcode/10001/rss.php -i -d >>
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weather/$(date).txt
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</blockquote>
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<h5>Get new posts from archive.org and automatically download them</h5>
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<p>This example uses opensource_audio from archive.org, this could be put on a
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cronjob</p>
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<blockquote>
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wget $(rss-cli -u https://archive.org/services/collection-rss.php?collection=opensource_audio -i0 --enclosureurl) -P ~/archive_audio
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</blockquote>
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</div>
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</div>
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