parserproxy

Parserproxy - A JSON-over-HTTP proxy for node-feedparser and node-opmlparser

This module acts as a proxy that fetches an RSS/Atom/RDF or OPML url that you request, parses it -- using node-feedparser or node-opmlparser -- and responds with the parsed JSON representation of the RSS/Atom/RDF or OPML you requested.

This module was created so that I could easily transform what is frequently a time-intensive, blocking operation -- i.e., XML parsing -- into an I/O operation (in a separate process, maybe on another server), which means the parsing will no longer be blocking.

Requirements

• node-feedparser
• node-opmlparser
• request

Installation

Via npm:

$ npm install parserproxy

Manually: (A fine idea if you're not going to use in programatically in your node.js program)

$ git clone git://github.com/danmactough/node-parserproxy.git parserproxy
$ cd parserproxy
$ npm install

Examples

Manually

If you want to run a parserproxy for use by several different scripts, then you'll want to clone the repository somewhere on your system and follow this example.

$ cd parserproxy
$ node server.js

Then in your node app:

var request = require('request');
request({ method : 'POST',
          uri : 'http://localhost:3030/parseFeed',
          body : { url: 'http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/rss/examples/rss2sample.xml' },
          json : true },
          function (err, response, body){
            if (!err && response.statusCode == 200) {
              console.log('%s [%s]', body.meta.title || body.meta.xmlUrl, body.meta.link);
              body.articles.forEach(function (article) {
                console.log('%s - %s', article.pubDate, article.title || article.description.substring(0,50));
              });
            }
            else {
              console.log("Either couldn't connect to parserproxy or it failed.");
            }
          });

Or on the command line:

$ curl http://localhost:3030/parseFeed?url=http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/rss/examples/rss2sample.xml

Programatically

var parserproxy = require('parserproxy')
  , options = ({ port: 3333, timeout: 2000 }) // Example options (optional)
  ;

parserproxy(options);

Using forever

Perhaps you want to use parserproxy as part of a Node.js application that will be running as a daemon. Follow the previous example, and drop that in a script named parserproxy.js in the root of your project directory. Then in your main application script, you can spawn that script as a child process, maybe using forever, like so:

var forever = require('forever')
  , parserproxy = new (forever.Monitor)(__dirname + '/parserproxy.js')
  ;

parserproxy.start();

To-do

Obviously, a pluggable memcache-like ability would be great. Pull requests always welcome. :-)

License

(The MIT License)

Copyright (c) 2011 Dan MacTough <[e-mail]>

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 use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED 'AS IS', WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.