Feedparser - Robust RSS, Atom, and RDF feed parsing in Node.js
This module adds methods for RSS, Atom, and RDF feed parsing in node.js using
Isaac Schlueter's sax parser.
Feedparser has a couple features you don't usually see:
- It resolves relative URLs (such as those seen in Tim Bray's "ongoing" feed).
- It properly handles XML namespaces (including those in sadistic feeds
that define a non-default namespace for the main feed elements).
Requirements
Installation
npm install feedparser
Changes since v0.15.x
-
The libxml-like helper methods have been removed. There is now just one input
interface: the stream interface.
-
Events:
304
, response
- removed, as Feedparser no longer fetches urlsarticle
, complete
- removed; use the stream interfacedata
- all readable streams will emit a data
event, but this puts the
stream into "old" v0.8-style push streams (if you're using v0.10, but not
v0.12)end
- stream behavior dictates that the end
event will never fire if
you don't read any data from the stream; you can kick the Feedparser stream
to work like an "old" v0.8-style push stream (and get the old end
event
behavior) by calling .resume()
.
-
SAXErrors
are emitted as error
events. By default, they are automatically
resumed. Pass { resume_saxerror: false }
as an option if you want to manually
handle SAXErrors
(abort parsing, perhaps).
Usage
The easiest way to use feedparser is to just give it a readable stream.
It will then return a readable object stream.
var FeedParser = require('feedparser')
, request = require('request');
var req = request('http://somefeedurl.xml')
, feedparser = new FeedParser([options]);
req.on('error', function (error) {
});
req.on('response', function (res) {
var stream = this;
if (res.statusCode != 200) return this.emit('error', new Error('Bad status code'));
stream.pipe(feedparser);
});
feedparser.on('error', function(error) {
});
feedparser.on('readable', function() {
var stream = this
, meta = this.meta
, item;
while (item = stream.read()) {
console.log(item);
}
});
I strongly encourage you to take a look at the iconv example
for a very thorough working example.
options
-
normalize
- Set to false
to override Feedparser's default behavior,
which is to parse feeds into an object that contains the generic properties
patterned after (although not identical to) the RSS 2.0 format, regardless
of the feed's format.
-
addmeta
- Set to false
to override Feedparser's default behavior, which
is to add the feed's meta
information to each article.
-
feedurl
- The url (string) of the feed. FeedParser is very good at
resolving relative urls in feeds. But some feeds use relative urls without
declaring the xml:base
attribute any place in the feed. This is perfectly
valid, but we don't know know the feed's url before we start parsing the feed
and trying to resolve those relative urls. If we discover the feed's url, we
will go back and resolve the relative urls we've already seen, but this takes
a little time (not much). If you want to be sure we never have to re-resolve
relative urls (or if FeedParser is failing to properly resolve relative urls),
you should set the feedurl
option. Otherwise, feel free to ignore this option.
-
resume_saxerror
- Set to false
to override Feedparser's default behavior, which
is to emit any SAXError
on error
and then automatically resume parsing. In
my experience, SAXErrors
are not usually fatal, so this is usually helpful
behavior. If you want total control over handling these errors and optionally
aborting parsing the feed, use this option.
Examples
See the examples
directory.
API
Transform Stream
Feedparser is a transform stream operating in "object mode": XML in -> Javascript objects out.
Each readable chunk is an object representing an article in the feed.
Events Emitted
meta
- called with feed meta
when it has been parsederror
- called with error
whenever there is a Feedparser error of any kind (SAXError, Feedparser error, etc.)
What is the parsed output produced by feedparser?
Feedparser parses each feed into a meta
(emitted on the meta
event) portion
and one or more articles
(emited on the data
event or readable after the readable
is emitted).
Regardless of the format of the feed, the meta
and each article
contain a
uniform set of generic properties patterned after (although not identical to)
the RSS 2.0 format, as well as all of the properties originally contained in the
feed. So, for example, an Atom feed may have a meta.description
property, but
it will also have a meta['atom:subtitle']
property.
The purpose of the generic properties is to provide the user a uniform interface
for accessing a feed's information without needing to know the feed's format
(i.e., RSS versus Atom) or having to worry about handling the differences
between the formats. However, the original information is also there, in case
you need it. In addition, Feedparser supports some popular namespace extensions
(or portions of them), such as portions of the itunes
, media
, feedburner
and pheedo
extensions. So, for example, if a feed article contains either an
itunes:image
or media:thumbnail
, the url for that image will be contained in
the article's image.url
property.
All generic properties are "pre-initialized" to null
(or empty arrays or
objects for certain properties). This should save you from having to do a lot of
checking for undefined
, such as, for example, when you are using jade
templates.
In addition, all properties (and namespace prefixes) use only lowercase letters,
regardless of how they were capitalized in the original feed. ("xmlUrl" and
"pubDate" also are still used to provide backwards compatibility.) This decision
places ease-of-use over purity -- hopefully, you will never need to think about
whether you should camelCase "pubDate" ever again.
The title
and description
properties of meta
and the title
property of
each article
have any HTML stripped if you let feedparser normalize the output.
If you really need the HTML in those elements, there are always the originals:
e.g., meta['atom:subtitle']['#']
.
List of meta properties
- title
- description
- link (website link)
- xmlurl (the canonical link to the feed, as specified by the feed)
- date (most recent update)
- pubdate (original published date)
- author
- language
- image (an Object containing
url
and title
properties) - favicon (a link to the favicon -- only provided by Atom feeds)
- copyright
- generator
- categories (an Array of Strings)
List of article properties
- title
- description (frequently, the full article content)
- summary (frequently, an excerpt of the article content)
- link
- origlink (when FeedBurner or Pheedo puts a special tracking url in the
link
property, origlink
contains the original link) - permalink (when an RSS feed has a
guid
field and the isPermalink
attribute is not set to false
, permalink
contains the value of guid
) - date (most recent update)
- pubdate (original published date)
- author
- guid (a unique identifier for the article)
- comments (a link to the article's comments section)
- image (an Object containing
url
and title
properties) - categories (an Array of Strings)
- source (an Object containing
url
and title
properties pointing to the original source for an article; see the RSS Spec for an explanation of this element) - enclosures (an Array of Objects, each representing a podcast or other enclosure and having a
url
property and possibly type
and length
properties) - meta (an Object containing all the feed meta properties; especially handy when using the EventEmitter interface to listen to
article
emissions)
Help
Contributors
View all the contributors.
Although node-feedparser
no longer shares any code with node-easyrss
, it was
the original inspiration and a starting point.
License
(The MIT License)
Copyright (c) 2011-2015 Dan MacTough and contributors
Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of
this software and associated documentation files (the 'Software'), to deal in
the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to
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the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so,
subject to the following conditions:
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