rss-parser

What is rss-parser?

rss-parser is a lightweight and easy-to-use library for parsing RSS and Atom feeds in Node.js. It provides a simple API to fetch and parse feeds, making it easy to integrate RSS feed reading functionality into your applications.

What are rss-parser's main functionalities?

Parsing a feed from a URL

This feature allows you to parse an RSS feed from a given URL. The code sample demonstrates how to fetch and parse the feed, then log the title of the feed and each item within it.

const Parser = require('rss-parser');
let parser = new Parser();

(async () => {
  let feed = await parser.parseURL('https://example.com/rss');
  console.log(feed.title);
  feed.items.forEach(item => {
    console.log(item.title + ':' + item.link);
  });
})();

Parsing a feed from a string

This feature allows you to parse an RSS feed from a raw XML string. The code sample demonstrates how to parse the XML string and log the title of the feed and each item within it.

const Parser = require('rss-parser');
let parser = new Parser();

let xml = `<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?>
<rss version="2.0">
  <channel>
    <title>Example RSS Feed</title>
    <link>https://example.com/</link>
    <description>This is an example RSS feed</description>
    <item>
      <title>Example Item</title>
      <link>https://example.com/example-item</link>
      <description>This is an example item</description>
    </item>
  </channel>
</rss>`;

(async () => {
  let feed = await parser.parseString(xml);
  console.log(feed.title);
  feed.items.forEach(item => {
    console.log(item.title + ':' + item.link);
  });
})();

Customizing the parser

This feature allows you to customize the parser to include additional fields that are not part of the default RSS/Atom specification. The code sample demonstrates how to include a custom field ('media:content') and log it for each item in the feed.

const Parser = require('rss-parser');
let parser = new Parser({
  customFields: {
    item: ['media:content']
  }
});

(async () => {
  let feed = await parser.parseURL('https://example.com/rss');
  console.log(feed.title);
  feed.items.forEach(item => {
    console.log(item.title + ':' + item['media:content']);
  });
})();

Other packages similar to rss-parser

feedparser

Feedparser is a robust RSS and Atom feed parsing library for Node.js. It offers more control and customization options compared to rss-parser, but it has a steeper learning curve and requires more boilerplate code to get started.

rss

The rss package is primarily focused on generating RSS feeds rather than parsing them. It allows you to create RSS feeds programmatically, which can be useful if you need to provide RSS feeds for your own content.

xml2js

xml2js is a general-purpose XML parser for Node.js. While it is not specifically designed for RSS or Atom feeds, it can be used to parse any XML, including RSS feeds. It provides more flexibility but requires more manual handling of the XML structure.

README

rss-parser

Installation

You can install via npm or bower:

npm install --save rss-parser
# or
bower install --save rss-parser

Usage

You can parse RSS from a URL, local file (NodeJS only), or a string.

• parseString(xml, [options,], callback)
• parseFile(filename, [options,], callback)
• parseURL(url, [options,] callback)

NodeJS

var parser = require('rss-parser');

parser.parseURL('https://www.reddit.com/.rss', function(err, parsed) {
  console.log(parsed.feed.title);
  parsed.feed.entries.forEach(function(entry) {
    console.log(entry.title + ':' + entry.link);
  })
})

Web

<script src="/bower_components/rss-parser/dist/rss-parser.min.js"></script>
<script>
RSSParser.parseURL('https://www.reddit.com/.rss', function(err, parsed) {
  console.log(parsed.feed.title);
  parsed.feed.entries.forEach(function(entry) {
    console.log(entry.title + ':' + entry.link);
  })
})
</script>

Output

Check out the full output format in test/output/reddit.json

feed:
    feedUrl: 'https://www.reddit.com/.rss'
    title: 'reddit: the front page of the internet'
    description: ""
    link: 'https://www.reddit.com/'
    entries:
        - title: 'The water is too deep, so he improvises'
          link: 'https://www.reddit.com/r/funny/comments/3skxqc/the_water_is_too_deep_so_he_improvises/'
          pubDate: 'Thu, 12 Nov 2015 21:16:39 +0000'
          creator: "John Doe"
          content: '<a href="http://example.com">this is a link</a> - <b>this is bold text</b>'
          contentSnippet: 'this is a link - this is bold text'
          guid: 'https://www.reddit.com/r/funny/comments/3skxqc/the_water_is_too_deep_so_he_improvises/'
          categories:
              - funny
          isoDate: '2015-11-12T21:16:39.000Z'

Notes:

• The contentSnippet field strips out HTML tags and unescapes HTML entities
• The dc: prefix will be removed from all fields
• Both dc:date and pubDate will be available in ISO 8601 format as isoDate
• If author is specified, but not dc:creator, creator will be set to author (see article)

Options

Redirects

By default, parseURL will follow up to one redirect. You can change this with options.maxRedirects.

parser.parseURL('https://reddit.com/.rss', {maxRedirects: 3}, function(err, parsed) {
  console.log(parsed.feed.title);
});

Custom Fields

If your RSS feed contains fields that aren't currently returned, you can access them using the customFields option.

var options = {
  customFields: {
    feed: ['otherTitle', 'extendedDescription'],
    item: ['coAuthor','subtitle'],
  }
}
parser.parseURL('https://www.reddit.com/.rss', options, function(err, parsed) {
  console.log(parsed.feed.extendedDescription);

  parsed.feed.entries.forEach(function(entry) {
    console.log(entry.coAuthor + ':' + entry.subtitle);
  })
})

To rename fields, you can pass in an array with two items, in the format [fromField, toField]:

var options = {
  customFields: {
    item: [
      ['dc:coAuthor', 'coAuthor'],
    ]
  }
}

Contributing

Contributions welcome!

Running Tests

The tests run the RSS parser for several sample RSS feeds in test/input and outputs the resulting JSON into test/output. If there are any changes to the output files the tests will fail.

To check if your changes affect the output of any test cases, run

npm test

To update the output files with your changes, run

WRITE_GOLDEN=true npm test

Publishing Releases

npm run build
git commit -a -m "Build distribution"
npm version minor # or major/patch
npm publish
git push --follow-tags