RSS Reader MIDlet
Platform: J2ME MIDP 1.0
Description:
The free RSS feed reader is a cell phone (mobile) J2ME/PhoneME MIDP application that is able to read most RSS servers/feed versions. RSS is a lightweight XML format designed for sharing headlines and other content like blogs and news. Data is stored on the device and updated on request. Read Wiki documentation for more details on which program to use.Add RSS feed bookmarks. The program can be compiled/built/run entirely with either proprietary or FOSS (Free and Open Source Software). Features include
- Parse RSS feeds
- Browse RSS feed headers
- Read topics
- Read all unread/read topics
- Supports ISO8859_1, windows-1252, UTF-8 , and UTF-16
- Update all/updated feeds with single command
- Open item link or enclosure in device browser (On supported devices)
- Save on exit or request
- Import and synchronize RSS feed lists from internet or phone memory
OPML HTML hyperlinks- Line by line
- HTML Auto links
HTML OPML auto links

Midlet is designed to run on J2ME MIDP 1.0 devices so it will work also on older devices. The downloadable package includes binary files along with source code and NetBeans IDE 5.5 project files.


Download binaries and source code
Older binaries for BlackBerry:
http://www.substanceofcode.com/downloads/midlets/rim/RSSReader.jad
http://www.substanceofcode.com/downloads/midlets/rim/RSSReader.cod
Contributors:
- Irving Bunton
Version history:
Version 1.5 – July 24th 2007
- Open link in device browser
- Support long feed URLs
Version 1.4 – December 20th 2006
- ATOM support
Version 1.3 – December 3rd 2006
- Sync feeds from OPML list
- Save feed items when application is closed
- Update all feeds with one command
- Improved text rendering (HTML tags are removed)
- Improved feed support
Version 1.2 – September 14th 2006
- Added a support for importing RSS feed lists using the line-by-line or OPML format
Version 1.1 – April 13th 2006
- Added a support for basic username and password authentication (eg. htaccess)
- Fixed the item title when item is changed
- Removed titles from the item screen to make it more simple
Version 1.0 – April 26th 2005
- First public release
April 6th, 2006 at 13:37
Hi,
Thanks for your efforts of publishing all your software! It’s nice to see that some people still have that ’share the WEALTH’ spirit.
I have a feature request for your RSS reader. Could you add the possibility to login (using basic authentication) on a feed ? Sometimes feeds are username/password protected.
Thanks in advance,
charlieMOGUL
April 7th, 2006 at 09:20
Thank you for your nice words. It is nice to hear that somebody actually uses my software :)
The basic authentication feature is something that I would be very willing to add. Would you happen to know a public site that requires to login to be able to read the feed? This would help me to test this feature.
November 19th, 2006 at 21:31
My site was hacked (again) few weeks ago and I wasn’t able to restore all comments that were made to his page. I still have the feature requests marked down in the google code’s issue manager (http://code.google.com/p/mobile-rss-reader/issues/list). I’m going to implement the “river of news” feature when I have enough time on my hands.
November 29th, 2006 at 21:54
When attempting to download the application on my phone I get 906 Invalid Descriptor. Unexpected content type returned from server. This happens when I hit the URL to the JAD.
My phone is LG CU 500 from Cingular.
Any ideas? Thanks!
November 30th, 2006 at 23:23
Abraham Tehrani: I have defined the JAD’s MIME content type as “text/vnd.sun.j2me.app-descriptor”. This should be the correct content type for JAD file. I just tried to download the JAD with my Nokia N80 and the installation works without any problems.
You could try to download the JAR file to your computer and install the application using your computer software if this is possible with LG CU 500.
January 30th, 2007 at 16:44
Hi, very nice applicaction, exist posibility to open OPML files from local storage or Phone memory card ??
Thank´s, Cristian
Buenos Aires, Argentina
February 26th, 2007 at 12:41
Hi,
Thanks for all the additions to an already very useful application.
I was wondering which mime-type the OPML import expects, since imports don’t seem to work.
Can it have something to do with the fact that my OPML file is nested ?
eg. there are more levels of “outlines” tags.
Thanks once again, and happy coding (C;
March 16th, 2007 at 17:49
Hello Tommi, excellent work with this RSS reader, my congrats :)
I’m trying to open the netbeans project though with Netbeans 5.5 but netbeans won’t recognise the folder as a working project. Any reason for that?
I would like to get around this so i can play around with this wonderful application.
March 22nd, 2007 at 15:45
For was is worth it, i didn’t have the Netbeans mobility pack installed… thanks for the guidance!
May 4th, 2007 at 12:58
I don’t think this application supports read/unread items just like in a rss reader on a desktop, is it possible for you to implement it?
May 14th, 2007 at 09:36
This little app is exactly what I have been looking for! A program that will run on my Nokia 9300 and suck feeds from my Gmail account.
I am pulling a feed for each GTD context, which I’ve set up as a label in my Gmail account, and can access those lists wherever I may be, just by opening the phone. I leave your program running all the time so that I can get at my lists even if I am out of range or don’t want to wait for an online.
Great job! Thank you very much for this!
May 18th, 2007 at 22:51
Thank you for your comments!
I could try to add read/unread items feature when implementing the “river of news” feature so that the main view would show only the new unread items if user chooses so.
July 31st, 2007 at 16:06
Hi Tommi,
Thanks for making this available. I’m trying to find a reader that can poll every 20 seconds. Would you mind if I edited your code to make your reader do this? If so, can you let me know where the variable(s) are? Or can you think of a more efficient way to transmit text streams from a web server to a mobile device in real time? (not SMS, too expensive)
Thanks!
August 5th, 2007 at 10:02
Hi Mark,
You are free to edit the code of this RSS Reader as it is open source. Polling could work fine for your needs. It might also be possible to keep the HttpConnection open for a long time but that could eat out the server resources.
August 28th, 2007 at 10:09
can u just create the rss reader to just straight away go to the website without adding the bookmark
September 6th, 2007 at 18:50
Hi,
Im trying to import my feeds from an OPML file generated by netvibes. Nothing happens when I try to import the OPML file.
Details:
Phone – Nokia N80.
file – OPML file.
Im trying to import the file from a FTP with the full URL including the .OPML at the end.
I give the URL and click on import but nothing seems to happen. Please advice what I can do or any other way i can test.
Thanks.
Thompson.
September 22nd, 2007 at 04:02
Unfortunately, MIDP does not directly support FTP. In the future, we may try to clone some non-J2ME code to do this.
September 22nd, 2007 at 08:43
The OPML should download in spite of mime type. A bug was fixed where only one feed was imported. Try the latest version at http://code.google.com/p/mobile-rss-reader/downloads/list.
October 9th, 2007 at 00:47
Hi Christian,
Version 1.10.7 allows data to be read from phone memory although sometimes it can be difficult to put the file on the phone as some phones will take a text file (even ending in XML) and put it into notes application which cannot be accessed.
Regards,
Irving
October 21st, 2007 at 12:50
Hi,
Two questions.
Just downloaded the MIDP 2.0 source code.
In order for it to run I had to add the “MIDP-2.0″); to the New StringItem part. Like it does not understand the compiler directive //#ifdef DMIDP20.
But it was defined in both Promptlist.java and RssReaderMIDlet.java.
Why is that? Sorry – I’m a bit new in mobile developement.
m_pgm_midp_vers = new StringItem(“Program MIDP version:”,”MIDP-2.0″);
//#ifdef DMIDP20
//# “MIDP-2.0″);
//#else
//@ “MIDP-1.0″);
//#endif
October 25th, 2007 at 08:25
Hi,
Did you mean in the code
Very early
//#define DMIDP20
Then, somewhat later
m_pgm_midp_vers = new StringItem(“Program MIDP version:”,
//#ifdef DMIDP20
“MIDP-2.0″);
//#else
//@ “MIDP-1.0″);
//#endif
This is a special preprocessor antenna used to generate this antenna.sourceforge.net
The original code is in presrc (for preprocessed source)
m_pgm_midp_vers = new StringItem(“Program MIDP version:”,
//#ifdef DMIDP20
“MIDP-2.0″);
//#else
“MIDP-1.0″);
//#endif
The preprocessor will see that DMIDP20 is defined and comment out using //@ the else as it means that DMIDP20 is not defined. Currently, I have only two situations for this MIDP20 for MIDP 2.0 and DMIDP10 for MIDP 1.0 defined. This code snipet allows us to display the program’s version so that the code with //#ifdef DMIDP20 is active so that the program is the one created midp20_RSSReader.jar. There is another //#ifdef MIDP10 which becomes midp10_RSSReader.jar, and still another with DJSR75 which gives midp20_jsr75_RSSReader.jar Another problem is that I had trouble getting this into the Netbeans build.xml. I will check in the build.xml that I use which I use with Sun’s Wireless Toolkit 2.5.1 although I will call it wtk-build.xml. Currently, using Netbeans it will compile MIDP-2.0 version as is.
January 2nd, 2008 at 20:17
A couple of feature suggests for you:
- The ability to set the polling interval (every 20 seconds)
- A “minimize” application menu option, so that the app continues to operate in the background.
- sound/vibration alert options for when new feed items are received in the background.
Cool. :-)
January 10th, 2008 at 06:16
Hi,
I installed RSS reader on my mobile phone MOTOROLA E6 ROCKR
The problem is that i am unable to import feeds.
I searched for jsr 75 on my phone
the settings showed”Phone JSR75 :available and on (true)
Program JSR 75 :Not available ”
Could You please help in this regard
Thank You
Kanth
January 10th, 2008 at 06:19
Also ,I forgot to mention ie., I installed the your jar file which is for phones with JSR 75
January 11th, 2008 at 22:26
I cannot get this to install on my Fusic LG550 (Sprint)
It downloads then comes up:
…
Download failed
Issue has been reported. Please try again later.
907 Invalid Content-File Extraction Error
…
I’ve tried midp20_jsr75_RSSReader-10.7.jar, midp20_RSSReader-10.7.jar and midp10_RSSReader-10.7.jar and they all give the same error.
If I rename the .jar into a .zip can I edit META-INF/MANIFEST.MF to override the error?