News configuration

add-newscodes specifies a list of strings that Liberator should identify as news codes regardless of whether the strings meet the criteria for automatic identification of news codes. Special characters used in news codes listed in add-newscodes do not need to be listed in newscode-valid-chars. add-newscodes only takes effect if newscode-exceptions is TRUE.

add-newscodes is one of the items used by Liberator to determine if a filter string applied to a news feed is a news code or a general search string. A news feed’s filter string is automatically identified as a news code if either of the following two criteria are met:

Syntax:

Type: array of strings (space separated)

Default value: none

newscode-exceptions specifies whether to allow specific exceptions to the rules for identifying news codes.

newscode-exceptions is one of the items used by Liberator to determine if a filter string applied to a news feed is a news code or a general search string. A news feed’s filter string is automatically identified as a news code if either of the following two criteria are met:

Syntax: newscodes-exceptions TRUE

Type: boolean

Default value: FALSE (no exceptions to the rules for identifying newscodes are allowed)

newscode-max-length sets the maximum length of a filter string that can be automatically identified as a news code.

newscode-max-length is one of the items used by Liberator to determine if a filter string applied to a news feed is a news code or a general search string. A news feed’s filter string is automatically identified as a news code if either of the following two criteria are met:

Syntax: newscode-max-length <max-filter-string-length>

Type: integer

Default value: 4

newscode-valid-chars controls the range of punctuation characters that may be present in a valid news code. Upper-case letters are recognised as valid characters by default and don’t need to be specified in newscode-valid-chars.

newscode-valid-chars is one of the items used by Liberator to determine if a filter string applied to a news feed is a news code or a general search string. A news feed’s filter string is automatically identified as a news code if either of the following two criteria are met:

Syntax: newscode-valid-chars <valid-characters>

Type: string

Default value: “/.”

newsitems-max specifies the maximum number of news headlines that Liberator sends to a client for any one request.

Syntax: newsitems-max <number-of-headlines>

Type: integer

Default value: 500

newsitems-saved specifies the maximum number of news headlines that Liberator caches in memory. When the maximum number of stored headlines is reached, the arrival of a new headline causes the oldest headline to be deleted.

Syntax: newsitems-saved <number-of-headlines>

Type: integer

Default value: 500

news-log specifies the filename of the current news log. Logging of news headlines is disabled by default. News logs are used by Liberator to replay news headlines on startup. The conventional value for news-log is 'news.log'.

Syntax: news-log <filename>

Type: string

Default value: none (news headlines are not logged)

news-purge-days specifies the number of day’s worth of headlines to retain during a daily purge of news headlines from Liberator’s cache, counting back from when the purge occurs. The default value is zero (days), meaning all headlines are purged.

To enable daily purging, specify news-purge-time.

Syntax: news-purge-days <days>

Type: integer

Default value: 0 (all headlines are purged)

news-purge-time schedules a time of day, in minutes after midnight, to purge old news headlines from Liberator’s cache. To disable purging of news headlines, set news-purge-time to -1 (the default).

To specify the maximum age of headlines to retain during a purge, set news-purge-days.

Syntax: news-purge-time <minutes-after-midnight>

Type: integer

Default value: -1 (purging of news headlines is disabled)

news-replay is used in conjunction with news-replay-days to limit the age of headlines replayed from the news log on startup of Liberator.

The behaviour of news-replay depends on whether its value is positive or negative.

Syntax: news-replay <minutes>

Type: integer

Default value: none (news headlines are not replayed)

Examples:

news-replay-days is used in conjunction with news-replay to limit the age of headlines replayed from the news log on startup of Liberator.

Whether news-replay-days is used depends on the value of news-replay.

Syntax: news-replay-days <days>

Type: integer

Default value: 0

Examples:

news-replay-files is an optional item that lists the news logs to replay on startup of Liberator. By default, only the current news log (see news-log) is replayed.

The list of files must be in chronological order, with the oldest log file first and the current news log file last. The default log-cycling settings use a cyclical naming-scheme for archived logs. While it is possible to order archive logs chronologically, the order changes through the log cycle. To avoid having to edit news-replay-files each time Liberator is started, it is recommended that the log-cycling scheme for the news log be changed to one compatible with news-replay-files. The examples below show configuration settings both with and without a customised log-cycling scheme.

If a news log file is specified without an absolute path name, the order of locations in which it will be searched for is:

Syntax: news-replay-files <file1> <file2> …​ <fileN>

Type: string array

Default value: none

Examples:

If the default log-cycling settings are used, the order of files supplied to news-replay-files changes depending on the time and day of week:

To avoid having to regularly reconfigure the value of news-replay-files before starting Liberator, you should customise the log-cycling settings for the news log. The example configuration below avoids a cyclical naming-scheme by maintaining a single, larger archive with a constant name:

The customised log-cycling scheme for the news log allows us to specify a fixed list of files to news-replay-files:

See also: