How to Build a Customizable News Aggregator with User Preferences in FlutterFlow

Create a news_sources collection with fields: name (String, e.g., TechCrunch), rssUrl (String, the RSS feed URL), category (String: Tech/Business/Science/Sports/Entertainment), logoUrl (String), isDefault (Boolean, true for sources pre-selected for new users), isActive (Boolean, admin control). Create an articles collection with: sourceId (Reference to news_sources), title (String), description (String, first 200 chars of content), url (String, link to full article), imageUrl (String, from RSS media:content or enclosure), publishedAt (Timestamp), sourceName (String, denormalized for display). On the users collection, add a selectedSources field: Array of References to news_sources documents. For new users, initialize selectedSources with all sources where isDefault is true.

Deploy a Cloud Function fetchAllRSSFeeds() that queries all news_sources where isActive is true. For each source, make an HTTP GET request to the rssUrl. Parse the XML response using a Node.js RSS parser like rss-parser. For each article item, check if an article doc already exists with the same url (deduplication). If not, create an articles doc with title, description (strip HTML tags), url, imageUrl (extract from media:content, enclosure, or og:image), publishedAt (parse pubDate), sourceId, and sourceName. Use Firestore batch writes for efficiency. Delete articles older than 30 days to manage storage.

Configure Cloud Scheduler to trigger fetchAllRSSFeeds every 2 hours. The function fetches each unique source only once regardless of how many users follow it. Track the last fetch time per source in a fetch_metadata subcollection to support conditional fetching (if the source supports ETag or Last-Modified headers). Log each fetch cycle: sources processed, new articles added, errors encountered. For sources that fail, retry once with a 5-second delay. If a source fails consistently for 3 cycles, set a failCount on the source doc and alert the admin.

Create a ManageSourcesPage. Query all news_sources where isActive is true, grouped by category. For each category, show a Text section header (e.g., Tech, Business). Under each header, display a ListView of source items. Each item is a Row containing: Image (logoUrl, 40x40), Column (source name Text + category Text in grey), and a trailing Switch widget. Initialize each Switch's value by checking if the source's document reference exists in the current user's selectedSources array. On Switch toggle, immediately update the user's selectedSources array — add the reference on toggle on, remove on toggle off. Show a count at the top: 'Following X of Y sources'. Add a Reset to Defaults button that sets selectedSources back to sources where isDefault is true.

Create a NewsFeedPage. On page load, read the current user's selectedSources array. Query the articles collection where sourceId is in the selectedSources list, ordered by publishedAt desc, limited to 50 articles. Because Firestore's whereIn supports a maximum of 10 values, batch the query if the user follows more than 10 sources: split selectedSources into groups of 10, run parallel queries, merge results client-side, and sort by publishedAt. Display articles in a ListView with a RefreshIndicator for pull-to-refresh. Each article card shows: imageUrl (if available), title (bodyLarge, bold, maxLines 2), description (bodyMedium, maxLines 3), Row with source logo + sourceName + time ago. Tapping a card opens the full article URL in a WebView.