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@deckyard/steam

News - feeds, and making them readable

ISteamNews. No key.

jennifer
for (def n in steam.newsForApp($c, 440, 5, 0)) {
    io.printf("%s\n  %s\n", $n.title, $n.url);
}

count is how many items to fetch, newest first; maxLength truncates each body to that many characters, 0 for whole bodies.

A game's feed mixes the developer's announcements with Steam editorial and third-party outlets. Name the feeds to keep only some:

jennifer
steam.newsForAppFeeds($c, 440, 5, 0, steam.FEED_ANNOUNCEMENTS);

feeds is comma-separated. FEED_ANNOUNCEMENTS (steam_community_announcements) and FEED_STEAM (steam_updates) are the common two; NewsItem.feedName gives the name of any other.

Markup

NewsItem.contents is HTML, BBCode, or both in one body:

{STEAM_CLAN_LOC_IMAGE}/554111/1adda6.png [b]Australian Hightower[/b] is
back!<br>Fixed <i>everything</i>&nbsp;&amp; more.

plainText turns it into text:

jennifer
io.printf("%s\n", steam.plainText($item.contents));
# Australian Hightower is back! Fixed everything & more.

In one pass it

  • replaces block tags (<br>, <p>, [list], [*], the BLOCK_TAGS list) with a space and removes inline ones (<b>, [url]) entirely;
  • drops {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE} and {STEAM_CLAN_LOC_IMAGE} embeds with the path behind them;
  • decodes &amp;, &lt;, &gt;, &quot;, &#39;, &apos;, &nbsp;, &hellip;, &mdash; and &ndash;;
  • collapses whitespace.

A bracketed run counts as a tag only when it opens with a tag name (any letter for HTML, a BBCODE_TAGS name for BBCode) and closes within MARKUP_SPAN (512) code points, so prose survives:

jennifer
steam.plainText("2 < 3 and 4 > 1");     # 2 < 3 and 4 > 1
steam.plainText("[citation needed]");   # [citation needed]
steam.plainText("array[0] is first");   # array[0] is first

The cost is linear in the body length, adversarial input included.

summarize(text, maxChars) then cuts at a word boundary and appends one …, never exceeding maxChars:

jennifer
io.printf("%s\n", steam.summarize(steam.plainText($item.contents), 160));

Both are pure, so they work as well on a Workshop description, which is BBCode too.

See examples/news.j.