@rowanmanning/feed-parser

A well-tested and resilient Node.js parser for RSS and Atom feeds.

Table of Contents

• Requirements
• Introduction
• Usage
  • Parsed feed
    • Feed
    • FeedAuthor
    • FeedCategory
    • FeedGenerator
    • FeedImage
    • FeedItem
    • FeedItemMedia
    • FeedMeta
• Supported feed formats
  • Standards
  • Leniency
• Contributing
• License
• Credit

Introduction

This is a Node.js-based feed parser for RSS and Atom feeds. The project has the following aims:

• Run automated tests against real-world feeds. It's currently tested against ~40 feeds via Sample Feeds. This ensures that we support real feeds rather than just the specifications.

• Related to the point above, be as lenient as possible with feed parsing.

• Keep up to date with the latest Node.js versions, including dropping support for end-of-life versions.

• Maintain compatibility with the great parts of node-feedparser, e.g. resolving relative URLs.

Requirements

This library requires the following to run:

• Node.js 18+

Usage

Install with npm:

npm install @rowanmanning/feed-parser

Load the library into your code:

const { parseFeed } = require('@rowanmanning/feed-parser');

// or

import { parseFeed } from '@rowanmanning/feed-parser';

You can use the parseFeed function to parse an RSS or Atom feed as a string. The return value is an object representation of the feed:

const feed = parseFeed('<channel> etc. </channel>');
console.log(feed.title);

This will try to parse even invalid feeds, but if no data can be pulled out an error will be thrown with a code property set to INVALID_FEED.

This library does not parse feeds via a URL, you can do so relatively easily with fetch:

const response = await fetch('https://github.com/rowanmanning/feed-parser/releases.atom');
const feed = parseFeed(await response.text());

Parsed feed

The feed object returned by parseFeed has the following properties.

Feed

Represents an RSS or Atom feed.

Property	Type	Notes
authors	FeedAuthor[]	The feed authors. Always an array but sometimes empty if no authors are found.
categories	FeedCategory[]	The feed categories. Always an array but sometimes empty if no categories are found.
copyright	string | null	The feed's copyright notice.
description	string | null	A short description of the feed.
generator	FeedGenerator | null	The software that generated the feed.
image	FeedImage | null	An image representing the feed.
items	FeedItem[]	The content items in the feed. Always an array but sometimes empty if no items are found.
language	string | null	The language the feed is written in.
meta	FeedMeta	Meta information about the format of the feed.
published	Date | null	The date the feed was last published.
self	string | null	A URL pointing to the feed itself.
title	string | null	The name of the feed.
updated	Date | null	The date the feed was last updated at.
url	string | null	A URL pointing to the HTML web page that this feed is for.

FeedAuthor

Represents the author of a Feed or FeedItem.

Property	Type	Notes
email	string | null	The author's email address.
name	string | null	The author's name.
url	string | null	A URL pointing to a representation of the author on the internet.

FeedCategory

Represents the content category of a Feed or FeedItem.

Property	Type	Notes
label	string | null	The category display label.
term	string	The category identifier. Often the same as the label.
url	string | null	A URL pointing to a representation of the category on the internet.

FeedGenerator

Represents software that generated a Feed.

Property	Type	Notes
label	string | null	The name of the software that generated the feed.
url	string | null	A URL pointing to further information about the generator.
version	string | null	The version of the software used to generate the feed.

FeedImage

Represents an image for a Feed.

Property	Type	Notes
title	string | null	The alternative text of the image.
url	string	The image URL.

FeedItem

Represents an RSS item or Atom entry in a Feed.

Property	Type	Notes
authors	FeedAuthor[]	The feed item authors. Always an array but sometimes empty if no authors are found.
categories	FeedCategory[]	The feed item categories. Always an array but sometimes empty if no categories are found.
content	string | null	The feed item content.
description	string | null	A short description of the feed item.
id	string | null	A unique identifier for the feed item.
image	FeedImage | null	An image representing the feed item.
media	FeedItemMedia[]	Media associated with the feed item. Always an array but sometimes empty if no items are found.
published	Date | null	The date the feed item was last published.
title	string | null	The title of the feed item.
updated	Date | null	The date the feed item was last updated at.
url	string | null	A URL pointing to the HTML web page that this feed item represents.

FeedItemMedia

Represents a piece of media attached to a FeedItem.

Property	Type	Notes
image	string | null	A URL pointing to an image representation of the media. E.g. a video cover image.
length	number | null	A length of the media in bytes.
mimetype	string | null	The full mime type of the media (e.g. `image/jpeg`).
title	string | null	The title of the media.
type	string | null	The type of the media (the first part of the mime type, e.g. `audio` or `image`).
url	string	A URL pointing to the media.

FeedMeta

Represents meta information about a Feed.

Property	Type	Notes
type	"atom" | "rss"	The name of the type of feed.
version	"0.3" | "0.9" | "1.0" | "2.0"	The version of the type of feed.

Supported feed formats

Standards

Feeds that adhere to the following standards are supported and most properties will be parsed:

• Atom 1.0
• Atom 0.3 (no spec available but an example is here)
• RSS 2.0
• RSS 0.9
• RDF Site Summary 1.0

The following XML namespaces are also parsed, and more data will be parsed out for RSS feeds that implement these:

• DublinCore (e.g. dc:creator)
• iTunes Podcast RSS feed (e.g. itunes:author)

Leniency

Feeds in the real world rarely comply strictly with the standards and can sometimes be invalid XML. We try to be as lenient as possible, only throwing errors if no data can be pulled out of the feed. We test against a suite of real-world feeds.

Contributing

The contributing guide is available here. All contributors must follow this library's code of conduct.

License

Licensed under the MIT license.
Copyright © 2022, Rowan Manning

Credit

This library takes inspiration from the following:

• Feedparser from Dan MacTough which I've been using for years.

• Gofeed by mmcdole which has a lovely API.