Desktop Notifier Application Using Python

To get started with the Desktop News Notifier, we require two libraries: feedparser and notify2.

Give following command to to install feedparser:

sudo pip3 install feedparser

For installing notify2 in your terminal:

sudo pip3 install notify2

Feedparser wil parse the feed that we will get from the URL. We will use notify2 for the desktop notification purpose. Other than these two libararies, we will use OS and time lib. Once you are done with the installation import both libraries in the program. Here, in this example i have parsed the news from the BBC UK, you can use any news feedparser URL. Let’s have a look at the program:

## Python program to illustrate
## desktop news notifier
import feedparser
import notify2
import os
import time
def parseFeed():
    f = feedparser.parse("http://feeds.bbci.co.uk/news/rss.xml")
    ICON_PATH = os.getcwd() + "/icon.ico"
    notify2.init('News Notify')
    for newsitem in f['items']:
        n = notify2.Notification(newsitem['title'],
                                newsitem['summary'],
                                icon=ICON_PATH
                                )
    n.set_urgency(notify2.URGENCY_NORMAL)
    n.show()
    n.set_timeout(15000)
    time.sleep(1200)

if __name__ == '__main__':
    parseFeed()

Screenshot of the news notification popup

Step by step Explanation of Code:

f = feedparser.parse("http://feeds.bbci.co.uk/news/rss.xml")

Here feedparser will parse the news data from the feed URL. The parsed data will be in the form of dictionary.

ICON_PATH = os.getcwd() + "/icon.ico"

If you want to set any icon in the notification then here we are setting the Icon path. This is optional.

notify2.init('News Notify')

Here we are initializing the notify2 using the init method of notify2. Initialize the D-Bus connection. Must be called before you send any notifications, or retrieve server info or capabilities.

 for newsitem in f['items']: 
        n = notify2.Notification(newsitem['title'], 
                                 newsitem['summary'], 
                                 icon=ICON_PATH 
                                 )

Looping from the parsed data to get the relevant information like news title, short summary and setting the notification icon using the Notification method of the notify2 lib.

n.set_urgency(notify2.URGENCY_NORMAL)

Set the urgency level to one of URGENCY_LOW, URGENCY_NORMAL or URGENCY_CRITICAL

n.show()

This method will show the notification on the Desktop

n.set_timeout(15000)

Setting the time to keep the notification on the desktop (in milliseconds). I have set here as 15 seconds.

time.sleep(1200)

This will usually display the news notification every 20 mins. You can set the time as per your requirement. You can find the full source code that is hosted on GitHub

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