feedparser gem - web feed parser and normalizer (Atom, RSS, JSON Feed, HTML h-entry, etc.)
October/2017: Added support for attachments / media enclosures in RSS and Atom.
June/2017: Added support for reading feeds in HTML with Microformats incl.
h-entry,
h-feed and others.
All feed with test assertions for easy (re)use and browsing moved
to its own repo, that is, /feeds.
May/2017: Added support for reading feeds in the new JSON Feed format in - surprise, surprise - JSON.
See the Awesome Feeds page ».
Feed • Item • Author • Tag • Attachment • Generator
Feed StructNote: uses question mark (?) for optional elements (otherwise assume required elements)
Title 'n' Summary
Note: The Feed parser will remove all html tags and attributes from the title (RSS 2.0+Atom),
description (RSS 2.0) and subtitle (Atom) content and will unescape HTML entities e.g. & becomes & and so on - always
resulting in plain vanilla text.
| Feed Struct | RSS 2.0 | Notes | Atom | Notes | JSON | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
feed.title | title | plain text | title | plain text | title | plain text |
feed.summary | description | plain text | subtitle? | plain text | description? | plain text |
Dates
| Feed Struct | RSS 2.0 | Notes | Atom | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
feed.updated | lastBuildDate? | RFC-822 format | updated | ISO 801 format |
feed.published | pubDate? | RFC-822 format | - |
Note: Check - for RSS 2.0 set feed.updated to pubDate or lastBuildDate if only one present? if both present - map as above.
RFC-822 date format e.g. Wed, 14 Jan 2015 19:48:57 +0100
ISO-801 date format e.g. 2015-01-11T09:30:16Z
class Feed
attr_accessor :format # e.g. atom|rss 2.0|etc.
attr_accessor :title # note: always plain vanilla text - if present html tags will get stripped and html entities unescaped
attr_accessor :url
attr_accessor :items
attr_accessor :summary # note: is description in RSS 2.0 and subtitle in Atom; always plain vanilla text
attr_accessor :updated # note: is lastBuildDate in RSS 2.0
attr_accessor :published # note: is pubDate in RSS 2.0; not available in Atom
attr_accessor :authors
attr_accessor :tags
attr_accessor :generator
end
(Source: lib/feedparser/feed.rb)
Item StructTitle 'n' Summary
Note: The Feed parser will remove all html tags and attributes from the title (RSS 2.0+Atom),
description (RSS 2.0) and summary (Atom) content
and will unescape HTML entities e.g. & becomes & and so on - always
resulting in plain vanilla text.
Note: In plain vanilla RSS 2.0 there's no difference between (full) content and summary - everything is wrapped
in a description element; however, best practice is using the content "module" from RSS 1.0 inside RSS 2.0.
If there's no content module present the feed parser will "clone" the description and use one version for item.summary and
the clone for item.content.
Note: In JSON Feed the title is not required (that is, is optional). The idea is to support "modern" micro blog postings (tweets, toots, etc.) that have no titles. The JSON Feed supports content_html and/or content_text. At least one version must be present.
Note: The content element will assume html content.
| Feed Struct | RSS 2.0 | Notes | Atom | Notes | JSON | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
item.title | title | plain text | title | plain text | title? | plain text |
item.summary | description | plain text | summary? | plain text | -tbd- | |
item.content | content? | html | content? | html | content_html (*) | html |
Dates
| Item Struct | RSS 2.0 | Notes | Atom | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
item.updated | pubDate? | RFC-822 format | updated | ISO 801 format |
item.published | - | RFC-822 format | published? | ISO 801 format |
Note: In plain vanilla RSS 2.0 there's only one pubDate for items, thus, it's not possible to differeniate between published and updated dates for items; note - the item.pubDate will get mapped to item.updated. To set the published date in RSS 2.0 use the dublin core module e.g dc:created, for example.
class Item
attr_accessor :title # note: always plain vanilla text - if present html tags will get stripped and html entities
attr_accessor :url
attr_accessor :content
attr_accessor :content_type # optional for now (text|html|html-escaped|binary-base64) - not yet set
attr_accessor :summary
attr_accessor :updated # note: is pubDate in RSS 2.0 and updated in Atom
attr_accessor :published # note: is published in Atom; not available in RSS 2.0 (use dc:created ??)
attr_accessor :guid # todo: rename to id (use alias) ??
end
(Source: lib/feedparser/item.rb)
Author Struct(Source: lib/feedparser/author.rb)
Tag Struct(Source: lib/feedparser/tag.rb)
Attachment StructAlso known as Media Enclosure
(Source: lib/feedparser/attachment.rb)
Generator Struct(Source: lib/feedparser/generator.rb)
require 'open-uri'
require 'feedparser'
txt = open( 'http://openfootball.github.io/feed.xml' ).read
feed = FeedParser::Parser.parse( txt )
puts feed.title
# => "football.db - Open Football Data"
puts feed.url
# => "http://openfootball.github.io/"
puts feed.items[0].title
# => "football.db - League Quick Starter Sample - Mauritius Premier League - Create Your Own Repo/League(s) from Scratch"
puts feed.items[0].url
# => "http://openfootball.github.io/2015/08/30/league-quick-starter.html"
puts feed.items[0].updated
# => Sun, 30 Aug 2015 00:00:00 +0000
puts feed.items[0].content
# => "Added a new quick starter sample using the Mauritius Premier League to get you started..."
...
or reading a feed in the new JSON Feed format in - surprise, surprise - JSON; note: nothing changes :-)
txt = open( 'http://openfootball.github.io/feed.json' ).read
feed = FeedParser::Parser.parse( txt )
puts feed.title
# => "football.db - Open Football Data"
puts feed.url
# => "http://openfootball.github.io/"
puts feed.items[0].title
# => "football.db - League Quick Starter Sample - Mauritius Premier League - Create Your Own Repo/League(s) from Scratch"
puts feed.items[0].url
# => "http://openfootball.github.io/2015/08/30/league-quick-starter.html"
puts feed.items[0].updated
# => Sun, 30 Aug 2015 00:00:00 +0000
puts feed.items[0].content_text
# => "Added a new quick starter sample using the Mauritius Premier League to get you started..."
...
Microformats let you mark up feeds and posts in HTML with
h-entry,
h-feed,
and friends.
Note: Microformats support in feedparser is optional. Install and require the the microformats gem to read feeds in HTML with Microformats.
require 'microformats'
text =<<HTML
<article class="h-entry">
<h1 class="p-name">Microformats are amazing</h1>
<p>Published by
<a class="p-author h-card" href="http://example.com">W. Developer</a>
on <time class="dt-published" datetime="2013-06-13 12:00:00">13<sup>th</sup> June 2013</time>
<p class="p-summary">In which I extoll the virtues of using microformats.</p>
<div class="e-content">
<p>Blah blah blah</p>
</div>
</article>
HTML
feed = FeedParser::Parser.parse( text )
puts feed.format
# => "html"
puts feed.items.size
# => 1
puts feed.items[0].authors.size
# => 1
puts feed.items[0].content_html
# => "<p>Blah blah blah</p>"
puts feed.items[0].content_text
# => "Blah blah blah"
puts feed.items[0].title
# => "Microformats are amazing"
puts feed.items[0].summary
# => "In which I extoll the virtues of using microformats."
puts feed.items[0].published
# => 2013-06-13 12:00:00
puts feed.items[0].authors[0].name
# => "W. Developer"
...
Planet Feed Reader in 20 Lines of Ruby
planet.rb:
require 'open-uri'
require 'feedparser'
require 'erb'
# step 1) read a list of web feeds
FEED_URLS = [
'http://vienna-rb.at/atom.xml',
'http://weblog.rubyonrails.org/feed/atom.xml',
'http://www.ruby-lang.org/en/feeds/news.rss',
'http://openfootball.github.io/feed.json',
]
items = []
FEED_URLS.each do |url|
feed = FeedParser::Parser.parse( open( url ).read )
items += feed.items
end
# step 2) mix up all postings in a new page
FEED_ITEM_TEMPLATE = <<EOS
<% items.each do |item| %>
<div class="item">
<h2><a href="<%= item.url %>"><%= item.title %></a></h2>
<div><%= item.content %></div>
</div>
<% end %>
EOS
puts ERB.new( FEED_ITEM_TEMPLATE ).result
Run the script:
$ ruby ./planet.rb
Prints:
<div class="item">
<h2><a href="http://vienna-rb.at/blog/2017/11/06/picks/">Picks / what the vienna.rb team thinks is worth sharing this week</a></h2>
<div>
<h3>6/11 Picks!!</h3>
<p>In a series on this website we'll entertain YOU with our picks...
...
See the Planet Pluto feed reader family:
Add your tools, scripts, apps here! Let us know.
Just install the gem:
$ gem install feedparser
The feedparser scripts are dedicated to the public domain.
Use it as you please with no restrictions whatsoever.
Send them along to the wwwmake Forum/Mailing List. Thanks!
FAQs
Unknown package
We found that feedparser demonstrated a healthy version release cadence and project activity because the last version was released less than a year ago. It has 1 open source maintainer collaborating on the project.
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