Unified Remote RSS Reader

This idea came to me when I built another project

I'm an huge fan of the Unified Remote app. I use it every day ! It let you use your device as a remote control for your desktop. There's a lot of remotes for several desktop applications. You can control mouse and keyboard with the basic one but you also have thousands possibilities using specifics ones. And the best of all, you're free to create your own ! I invite you to download the desktop server and the mobile client if you wanna try ;).

For my needs, I wanted to display on an adroid device an updated list of news. I wanted to have the title list on the device and the detail on my desktop when I clic on a title.

Step 1: The Layout

Here's a layout I suggest but you can easily do on your own. The documentation is really clear and helpful.

I wanted my news lists display as tabs. Each tab is for one RSS stream. The last tab is for scroll up or down on a page or close it. On the example I give, I have 2 stream : France24 and BFM.

Step 2: The Script

The script is mainly a parser of the xml stream.

The main function "update" :

It will download the xml stream and read it. Titles are extracted for the display. Links are extracted to be use when user click on a row. This method take an argument : "index". The index is for known on which tab the user is. Regarding of that, the list will be populate with one stream or another.

The function "tap" is called when user tap on a row in the news list.

The function "closetab" will trigger the shortcut "ctrl" + "w", which is used to close a tab on Google Chrome. You can customize it to make fit it to your own browser.

The function "goup" will trigger the shortcut "shift" + "space", which is used to scroll up on a webpage open in Google Chrome.

The function "godown" will trigger the shortcut "space", which is used to scroll down on a webpage open in Google Chrome.

Step 3: The .prop File

Here's some informations about your remote, feel free to fill it as you want. My example :

meta.name: News
meta.author: ArthurB
meta.description: News from BFM & France24
meta.tags: bfm, rss

Step 4: Do Your Own !

I'll be really glad to see your remotes ! If you build one, please tell me more about it in the comment section :)