---
title: "RSS Full Text"
date: 2025-07-01
tags: ["service"]
icon: "rss.svg"
short_desc: "Creates RSS full text feeds."
---

[fivefilters full-text-rss](https://www.fivefilters.org/full-text-rss/)
is Full-Text RSS service. Free open source RSS feeds usually provide
the summary or limited lines of URL contents. There is a way to see
the entire web page with text-based web browser such as lynx, w3m, and so on.
However, I want to do everything in [newsboat](https://github.com/newsboat/newsboat).
With this, you can retrieve the full-text of individual articles or
complete full-text RSS feeds. It enriches third-party RSS feeds with
full text articles.

## Installation

### Setting Up and Configuring

Check PHP version (e.g., php7.4-fpm). Adjust in later steps accordingly.

```sh
sudo apt update
sudo apt install php5.6 php5.6-fpm php5.6-tidy nginx git unzip certbot python3-certbot-nginx
```

Download Full-Text RSS

```sh
cd /var/www
sudo git clone https://bitbucket.org/fivefilters/full-text-rss.git ftr
cd ftr
sudo git reset --hard 384d52fd83361ffd6e7f28bd39b322970a015a28
```

Download Full-Text-RSS site config

```sh
sudo git clone https://github.com/fivefilters/ftr-site-config
cp -f ftr-site-config/* site_config/standard
```

Set permissions:

```sh
mkdir -p /var/www/ftr/cache/rss
sudo chown -R www-data:www-data /var/www/ftr
sudo chmod -R 777 /var/www/ftr/cache /var/www/ftr/site_config
```

Create php.ini:

```sh
mkdir -p /etc/php/5.6/fpm
sed -Ei "s/^(memory_limit).*/\1 = 256M/" /etc/php/5.6/fpm/php.ini
```

### Configuring nginx & cerbot

Create Nginx Config with Clean /feed + Rate Limiting

Create a new site config:

```sh
sudo vim /etc/nginx/sites-available/ftr
```

Paste this (adjust php7.4-fpm.sock if needed):

```nginx
# Rate limiting zone: 10 req/min per IP
limit_req_zone $binary_remote_addr zone=ratelimit:10m rate=10r/m;

server {
    listen 80;
    listen [::]:80;

    root /var/www/ftr;
    server_name ftr.thesiah.xyz;  # Change to your domain
    index index.html index.htm index.nginx-debian.html index.php;

    location / {
        try_files $uri $uri/ =404;
    }

    # Rewrite clean URL /feed?url=... to makefulltextfeed.php
    location /feed {
        rewrite ^/feed$ /makefulltextfeed.php last;
        limit_req zone=ratelimit burst=5;
    }

    location ~ \.php$ {
        include snippets/fastcgi-php.conf;
        fastcgi_pass unix:/var/run/php/php7.4-fpm.sock;
    }

    location ~ /\.ht {
        deny all;
    }
}
```

Enable nginx on the site:

```sh
sudo ln -s /etc/nginx/sites-available/ftr /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/
```

Secure with HTTPS (Certbot)

```sh
sudo certbot --nginx -d ftr.thesiah.xyz
```

Restart nginx

```sh
sudo systemctl reload nginx
```

### Custom Config

Add custom_config.php:
Save to: /var/www/ftr/custom_config.php

```php
<?php
/* Full-Text RSS config */
if (!isset($options)) $options = new stdClass();
$options->enabled = true;
$options->debug = true;
$options->default_entries = 200;
$options->max_entries = 1000;
$options->content = 'user';
$options->summary = 'user';
$options->rewrite_relative_urls = true;
$options->exclude_items_on_fail = 'user';
$options->singlepage = true;
$options->multipage = true;
$options->caching = true;
$options->cache_time = 120;
$options->cache_dir = dirname(__FILE__).'/cache';
$options->message_to_prepend = '';
$options->message_to_append = '';
$options->error_message = '[unable to retrieve full-text content]';
$options->keep_enclosures = true;
$options->detect_language = 'user';
$options->user_submitted_config = false;
$options->remove_native_ads = false;
$options->admin_credentials = array('username'=>'admin', 'password'=>getenv('FTR_ADMIN_PASSWORD'));
$options->allowed_urls = array();
$options->blocked_urls = array();
$options->key_required = false;
$options->api_keys = array();
$options->default_entries_with_key = 5;
$options->max_entries_with_key = 10;
$options->xss_filter = 'user';
$options->favour_feed_titles = 'user';
$options->allowed_parsers = array('libxml', 'html5php');
$options->allow_parser_override = true;
$options->cors = false;
$options->proxy_servers = array();
$options->proxy = true;
$options->allow_proxy_override = true;
$options->apc = true;
$options->smart_cache = true;
$options->fingerprints = array(
	'<meta name="generator" content="Posterous"' => array('hostname'=>'fingerprint.posterous.com', 'head'=>true),
	'<meta content=\'blogger\' name=\'generator\'' => array('hostname'=>'fingerprint.blogspot.com', 'head'=>true),
	'<meta name="generator" content="Blogger"' => array('hostname'=>'fingerprint.blogspot.com', 'head'=>true),
	'<meta name="generator" content="WordPress' => array('hostname'=>'fingerprint.wordpress.com', 'head'=>true)
);
$options->rewrite_url = array(
	'docs.google.com' => array('/Doc?' => '/View?'),
	'tnr.com' => array('tnr.com/article/' => 'tnr.com/print/article/'),
	'.m.wikipedia.org' => array('.m.wikipedia.org' => '.wikipedia.org'),
	'm.vanityfair.com' => array('m.vanityfair.com' => 'www.vanityfair.com')
);
$options->content_type_exc = array(
							   'application/pdf' => array('action'=>'link', 'name'=>'PDF'),
							   'image' => array('action'=>'link', 'name'=>'Image'),
							   'audio' => array('action'=>'link', 'name'=>'Audio'),
							   'video' => array('action'=>'link', 'name'=>'Video')
							  );
$options->cache_directory_level = 0;
$options->cache_cleanup = 100;
if (!defined('_FF_FTR_VERSION')) define('_FF_FTR_VERSION', '3.5');
if (basename(__FILE__) == 'config.php') {
	if (file_exists(dirname(__FILE__).'/custom_config.php')) {
		require_once dirname(__FILE__).'/custom_config.php';
	}

	foreach ($options as $_key=>&$_val) {
		$_key = "ftr_$_key";
		if (($_env = getenv($_key)) !== false) {
			if (is_array($_val)) {
				if ($_key === 'ftr_admin_credentials') {
					$_val = array_combine(array('username', 'password'), array_map('trim', explode(':', $_env, 2)));
					if ($_val === false) $_val = array('username'=>'admin', 'password'=>'');
				}
			} elseif ($_env === 'true' || $_env === 'false') {
				$_val = ($_env === 'true');
			} elseif (is_numeric($_env)) {
				$_val = (int)$_env;
				$_val = $_env;
			}
		}
	}
	unset($_key, $_val, $_env);
}
```

Replace deprecated code manually from:

```php
while (list($name, $value) = each($directives)) {
```

to:

```php
foreach ($directives as $name => $value) {
```

Or run this command:

```sh
sed -i 's/while *(list(\$name, *\$value) *= *each(\$directives)) *{/foreach (\$directives as \$name => \$value) {/' /var/www/ftr/libraries/Zend/Cache/Backend.php
```

Restart php5.6-fpm:

```sh
sudo systemctl restart php5.6-fpm
```

### Local host

Visit http://localhost:80 for the integrated web UI

{{<img src="/pix/rss-webui.png" alt="A screenshot of the Full Text RSS" >}}

Article extraction: http://localhost/extract.php?url=[url]
Feed conversion: http://localhost/makefulltextfeed.php?url=[url]