RSS Monitor

Track RSS and Atom feeds for new content.

Installation

npm install feedparser

Quick Start

Basic Feed Fetch

const { fetchFeed } = require('./rss-monitor');

const items = await fetchFeed('https://example.com/feed.xml');
console.log(items); // Array of feed items

Track Multiple Feeds

const { trackFeeds } = require('./rss-monitor');

const feeds = [
  { url: 'https://blog1.com/rss', name: 'Blog 1' },
  { url: 'https://blog2.com/atom.xml', name: 'Blog 2' }
];

const results = await trackFeeds(feeds);
console.log(results);

Check for New Items

const { checkForNewItems } = require('./rss-monitor');

const lastCheck = new Date('2024-01-01T00:00:00Z');
const newItems = await checkForNewItems('https://example.com/feed.xml', lastCheck);
console.log(`Found ${newItems.length} new items`);

Common Operations

Fetch Latest Items

const items = await fetchFeed('https://xkcd.com/atom.xml', { limit: 10 });

Get Feed Metadata

const feed = await fetchFeedMetadata('https://example.com/feed.xml');
console.log(feed.title, feed.link, feed.description);

Parse Feed with Options

const items = await fetchFeed('https://example.com/feed.xml', {
  limit: 20,
  includeContent: false,
  timeout: 5000
});

Compare with Previous Check

const newItems = await checkForNewItems(
  'https://example.com/feed.xml',
  lastCheckDate,
  { limit: 50 }
);

Output Format

Each feed item contains:

• title - Item title
• link - Item URL
• description - Item summary/description
• pubDate - Publication date (ISO string)
• author - Author name (if available)
• content - Full content (if available and includeContent: true)
• categories - Tags/categories
• enclosures - Media attachments (images, audio, video)

Examples

RSS Feed Reader

const rssMonitor = require('./rss-monitor');

async function readFeeds() {
  const feeds = [
    'https://xkcd.com/atom.xml',
    'https://blog.github.com/feed/',
    'https://news.ycombinator.com/rss'
  ];
  
  for (const feedUrl of feeds) {
    try {
      const items = await rssMonitor.fetchFeed(feedUrl, { limit: 5 });
      console.log(`\n📰 ${feedUrl}`);
      items.forEach(item => {
        console.log(`  • ${item.title}`);
        console.log(`    ${item.link}`);
      });
    } catch (err) {
      console.error(`Failed to fetch ${feedUrl}:`, err.message);
    }
  }
}

Monitor for New Content

const rssMonitor = require('./rss-monitor');
const fs = require('fs').promises;

const STATE_FILE = './last-check.json';

async function monitorFeeds() {
  // Load last check times
  let lastChecks = {};
  try {
    lastChecks = JSON.parse(await fs.readFile(STATE_FILE, 'utf8'));
  } catch (e) {
    // No state file yet
  }
  
  const feeds = [
    { url: 'https://xkcd.com/atom.xml', name: 'XKCD' },
    { url: 'https://blog.github.com/feed/', name: 'GitHub Blog' }
  ];
  
  for (const feed of feeds) {
    const lastCheck = lastChecks[feed.url] ? new Date(lastChecks[feed.url]) : null;
    const newItems = await rssMonitor.checkForNewItems(feed.url, lastCheck);
    
    if (newItems.length > 0) {
      console.log(`\n🆕 ${feed.name}: ${newItems.length} new items`);
      newItems.forEach(item => {
        console.log(`  • ${item.title}`);
      });
    }
    
    lastChecks[feed.url] = new Date().toISOString();
  }
  
  await fs.writeFile(STATE_FILE, JSON.stringify(lastChecks, null, 2));
}

Notes

• Supports both RSS 2.0 and Atom 1.0 formats
• Automatically detects feed format
• Handles redirects and common feed variations
• Default timeout: 10 seconds
• Items sorted by publication date (newest first)