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I'm following up on question from here: How to build a news feed with aggregate and flat types?

Tommaso posted a great answer which basically states - use a single aggregated feed. But the getstream.io documentation says:

Only Flat Feeds may be followed

So how do you achieve having an aggregated-like timeline which users can follow? Do you have to use flat feed and do aggregation on your own somewhere in backend?

Vladimir Marton
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Alright, I found a great article on Medium: https://medium.com/getstream-io/best-practices-for-instagram-style-feeds-3e1d9dd2dc03. I'm answering my own question to let others know what I found out.

Let me explain.

Only Flat Feeds may be followed

actually means:

Only Flat Feeds may be followed (by any other type of feed, such as aggregated).

When you create new user (let's say John), you should create his flat feed. This feed will be shown when John goes to his profile - he will see only his own activities.

After that, create an aggregated feed for him. This feed will be shown on his timeline, with activities from other users.

  • When John follows 10 people, his aggregated feed will follow 10 flat feeds.
  • When John becomes followed by 5 people, their aggregated feeds will follow John's flat feed.
  • When John (or anyone else) opens his profile, he should be shown a flat feed which the specific user can follow
  • When John opens his timeline, he should be shown an aggregated feed populated by activities of people he followed

Looks to me like aggregated feeds are here only for following flat feeds and displaying their activities. And flat feeds are here for actually posting content (status/image/video).

Update: Just found an article here: https://getstream.io/blog/aggregated-feeds-demystified/ which basically says that activities should be added to aggregated feed, not flat feed. This basically says that my explanation above is not correct. Anyone could assist with this?

Vladimir Marton
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