Middlewares

A middleware function is a function that gets executed before the articles are upload to the database.

Middleware functions can be useful for:

• logging
• article formatting

Registering a middleware

saffron.use('middlewareName', (...args) => {
    //...
})

Format article

For changing the contents of the articles before uploading to the database. It gets as parameter every article that was found from the parsers and must return the same object when it changed.

saffron.use("article.format", (article) => {
    // If possible set pubDate with milliseconds.
    let ms = new Date(article.pubDate).getTime()
    if(!isNaN(ms))
        article.pubDate = ms;
    
    // Delete article id so it will not be saved to the database.
    article.id = "";
    
    // Return the changed article.
    return article
})

If you want to customize the website's article identification override the getHash function.

// Will identify an article based on its link and title.
article.getHash = () => `${article.link}:${article.title}`;

info

You can also access the source class of the article by calling article.getSource(). Note that any changes made on the source class will also affect the saved source.

Articles

This middleware can be used to edit the articles in bulk. You can sort or filter them as you want. The only requirement is to return an array (empty or not) of articles.

saffron.use("articles", (articles) => {
  // ...
  return articles
})

Middleware order

The order where the above extensions are executed is the order where they were called. Each middleware function can be called more than once.