sitemap-generator

Sitemap Generator

Easily create XML sitemaps for your website.

Generates a sitemap by crawling your site. Uses streams to efficiently write the sitemap to your drive and runs asynchronously to avoid blocking the thread. Is cappable of creating multiple sitemaps if threshold is reached. Respects robots.txt and meta tags.

Table of contents

• Install
• Usage
• API
• Options
• Events
• License

Install

This module is available on npm.

$ npm install -S sitemap-generator

This module is running only with Node.js and is not meant to be used in the browser.

const SitemapGenerator = require('sitemap-generator');

Usage

const SitemapGenerator = require('sitemap-generator');

// create generator
const generator = SitemapGenerator('http://example.com', {
  stripQuerystring: false
});

// register event listeners
generator.on('done', () => {
  // sitemaps created
});

// start the crawler
generator.start();

The crawler will fetch all folder URL pages and file types parsed by Google. If present the robots.txt will be taken into account and possible rules are applied for each URL to consider if it should be added to the sitemap. Also the crawler will not fetch URL's from a page if the robots meta tag with the value nofollow is present and ignore them completely if noindex rule is present. The crawler is able to apply the base value to found links.

API

The generator offers straightforward methods to start and stop it. You can also query some information about status and output.

getPaths()

Returns array of paths to generated sitemaps. Empty until the crawler is done.

getStats()

Returns object with info about fetched URL's. Get's updated live during crawling process.

{
  added: 0,
  ignored: 0,
  errored: 0
}

getStatus()

Returns the status of the generator. Possible values are waiting, started, stopped and done.

start()

Starts crawler asynchronously and writes sitemap to disk.

stop()

Stops the running crawler and halts the sitemap generation.

queueURL(url)

Add a URL to crawler's queue. Useful to help crawler fetch pages it can't find itself.

Options

You can provide some options to alter the behaviour of the crawler.

var generator = SitemapGenerator('http://example.com', {
  crawlerMaxDepth: 0,
  filepath: path.join(process.cwd(), 'sitemap.xml'),
  maxEntriesPerFile: 50000,
  stripQuerystring: true
});

authUser

Type: string
Default: undefined

Provides an username for basic authentication. Requires authPass option.

authPass

Type: string
Default: undefined

Password for basic authentication. Has to be used with authUser option.

changeFreq

Type: string
Default: undefined

If defined, adds a <changefreq> line to each URL in the sitemap. Possible values are always, hourly, daily, weekly, monthly, yearly, never. All other values are ignored.

crawlerMaxDepth

Type: number
Default: 0

Defines a maximum distance from the original request at which resources will be fetched.

filepath

Type: string
Default: ./sitemap.xml

Filepath for the new sitemap. If multiple sitemaps are created "part_$index" is appended to each filename.

httpAgent

Type: HTTPAgent
Default: http.globalAgent

Controls what HTTP agent to use. This is useful if you want configure HTTP connection through a HTTP/HTTPS proxy (see http-proxy-agent).

httpsAgent

Type: HTTPAgent
Default: https.globalAgent

Controls what HTTPS agent to use. This is useful if you want configure HTTPS connection through a HTTP/HTTPS proxy (see https-proxy-agent).

lastMod

Type: boolean
Default: false

Whether to add a <lastmod> line to each URL in the sitemap, and fill it with today's date.

maxEntriesPerFile

Type: number
Default: 50000

Google limits the maximum number of URLs in one sitemap to 50000. If this limit is reached the sitemap-generator creates another sitemap. A sitemap index file will be created as well.

priorityMap

Type: array
Default: []

If provided, adds a <priority> line to each URL in the sitemap. Each value in priorityMap array corresponds with the depth of the URL being added. For example, the priority value given to a URL equals priorityMap[depth - 1]. If a URL's depth is greater than the length of the priorityMap array, the last value in the array will be used. Valid values are between 1.0 and 0.0.

stripQueryString

Type: boolean
Default: true

Whether to treat URL's with query strings like http://www.example.com/?foo=bar as indiviual sites and add them to the sitemap.

userAgent

Type: string
Default: Node/SitemapGenerator

Set the User Agent used by the crawler.

timeout

Type: number
Default: 300000

The maximum time in miliseconds before continuing to gather url's

Events

The Sitemap Generator emits several events which can be listened to.

add

Triggered when the crawler successfully added a resource to the sitemap. Passes the url as argument.

generator.on('add', (url) => {
  // log url
});

done

Triggered when the crawler finished and the sitemap is created. Provides statistics as first argument. Stats are the same as from getStats.

generator.on('done', (stats) => {
  // sitemaps created
});

error

Thrown if there was an error while fetching an URL. Passes an object with the http status code, a message and the url as argument.

generator.on('error', (error) => {
  console.log(error);
  // => { code: 404, message: 'Not found.', url: 'http://example.com/foo' }
});

ignore

If an URL matches a disallow rule in the robots.txt file or meta robots noindex is present this event is triggered. The URL will not be added to the sitemap. Passes the ignored url as argument.

generator.on('ignore', (url) => {
  // log ignored url
});

License

MIT © Lars Graubner