TIL: Update random feed in elfeed

The command elfeed-update-feed will prompt you for a feed amongst the list of feed registered in elfeed-feeds.

This is useful to avoid refreshing all feeds when you know only one matters at that moment (e.g.: when debugging a feed).

I use a custom feed from rsshub.app and it has occasional problems. I forked rsshub.app and added an optional parameter to that route that allows to backfill missed posts. However, I didn’t want to push that change to the upstream as it would likely be rejected as being too specific. So I only occasionally start a local rsshub server when I need to backfill. Now for elfeed to pick that feed up, I used to configure it and pull it which was cumbersome.

Today, i just pasted the url to my local server/route in elfeed-update-feed and it pulled it with no issue. I shouldn’t be surprised but still great to see.

Note: in terms of internals, it’s not perfect as even though these two sources are named the same, they don’t share the same source url but for my purpose, it’s good enough.