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xast utility to build (web) feeds (RSS, Atom).

Contents

What is this?

This package generates RSS or Atom feeds from data.

When should I use this?

This package helps you add feeds to your site. It focusses on a small set of widely used and supported parts of feeds. It has a few good options instead of overwhelming with hundreds of things to configure. If you do need more things, well: this utility gives you a syntax tree, which you can change.

It’s good to use this package to build several feeds and to only include recent posts (often 15-20 items are included in a channel). You should make a channel for all your posts; when relevant, separate channels per language as well; and potentially, channels per post type (such as separate ones for blog posts, notes, and images).

Just using either RSS or Atom is probably fine: no need to do both.

Install

This package is ESM only. In Node.js (version 16+), install with npm:

npm install xast-util-feed

In Deno with esm.sh:

import {atom, rss} from 'https://esm.sh/xast-util-feed@2'

In browsers with esm.sh:

<script type="module">
  import {atom, rss} from 'https://esm.sh/xast-util-feed@2?bundle'
</script>

Use

import {atom, rss} from 'xast-util-feed'
import {toXml} from 'xast-util-to-xml'

const channel = {
  title: 'NYT > Top Stories',
  url: 'https://www.nytimes.com',
  feedUrl: 'https://rss.nytimes.com/services/xml/rss/nyt/HomePage.xml',
  lang: 'en',
  author: 'The New York Times Company'
}

const data = [
  {
    title: 'Senate Balances Impeachment Trial With an Incoming President',
    url:
      'https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/14/us/politics/impeachment-senate-trial-trump.html',
    descriptionHtml: '<p>Senate leaders etc etc etc.</p>',
    author: 'Nicholas Fandos and Catie Edmondson',
    published: 'Fri, 15 Jan 2021 01:18:49 +0000',
    tags: ['Senate', 'Murkowski, Lisa', 'Trump, Donald J']
  }
]

console.log(toXml(rss(channel, data)))
console.log(toXml(atom(channel, data)))

Yields (pretty printed):

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<rss version="2.0" xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/" xmlns:atom="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom">
  <channel>
    <title>NYT > Top Stories</title>
    <description></description>
    <link>https://www.nytimes.com/</link>
    <lastBuildDate>Sun, 17 Jan 2021 09:00:54 GMT</lastBuildDate>
    <dc:date>2021-01-17T09:00:54.781Z</dc:date>
    <atom:link href="https://rss.nytimes.com/services/xml/rss/nyt/HomePage.xml" rel="self" type="application/rss+xml"></atom:link>
    <language>en</language>
    <dc:language>en</dc:language>
    <copyright>© 2021 The New York Times Company</copyright>
    <dc:rights>© 2021 The New York Times Company</dc:rights>
    <item>
      <title>Senate Balances Impeachment Trial With an Incoming President</title>
      <dc:creator>Nicholas Fandos and Catie Edmondson</dc:creator>
      <link>https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/14/us/politics/impeachment-senate-trial-trump.html</link>
      <guid isPermaLink="false">https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/14/us/politics/impeachment-senate-trial-trump.html</guid>
      <pubDate>Fri, 15 Jan 2021 01:18:49 GMT</pubDate>
      <dc:date>2021-01-15T01:18:49.000Z</dc:date>
      <category>Senate</category>
      <category>Murkowski, Lisa</category>
      <category>Trump, Donald J</category>
      <description>&#x3C;p>Senate leaders etc etc etc.&#x3C;/p></description>
    </item>
  </channel>
</rss>
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<feed xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom" xml:lang="en">
  <title>NYT > Top Stories</title>
  <subtitle></subtitle>
  <link>https://www.nytimes.com/</link>
  <id>https://www.nytimes.com/</id>
  <updated>Sun, 17 Jan 2021 09:00:54 GMT</updated>
  <link href="https://rss.nytimes.com/services/xml/rss/nyt/HomePage.xml" rel="self" type="application/atom+xml"></link>
  <rights>© 2021 The New York Times Company</rights>
  <author>
    <name>The New York Times Company</name>
  </author>
  <category term="Senate"></category>
  <category term="Murkowski, Lisa"></category>
  <category term="Trump, Donald J"></category>
  <entry>
    <title>Senate Balances Impeachment Trial With an Incoming President</title>
    <author>
      <name>Nicholas Fandos and Catie Edmondson</name>
    </author>
    <link href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/14/us/politics/impeachment-senate-trial-trump.html"></link>
    <id>https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/14/us/politics/impeachment-senate-trial-trump.html</id>
    <published>2021-01-15T01:18:49.000Z</published>
    <content type="html">&#x3C;p>Senate leaders etc etc etc.&#x3C;/p></content>
  </entry>
</feed>

API

This package exports the identifiers atom and rss. There is no default export.

atom(channel, data)

Build an Atom feed.

Parameters
Returns

Atom feed (Root).

rss(channel, data)

Build an RSS feed.

Parameters
Returns

RSS feed (Root).

Author

Author object (TypeScript type).

Fields
name

Name (string, required, example: 'Acme, Inc.' or 'Jane Doe').

email

Email address (string, optional, ,example: john@example.org)

url

URL to author (string, optional, example: 'https://example.org/john').

url is used in atom, not in rss.

Channel

Data on the feed (the group of items) (TypeScript type).

Fields
title

Title of the channel (string, required, example: Zimbabwe | The Guardian).

url

Full URL to the site (string, required, example: 'https://www.theguardian.com/world/zimbabwe').

feedUrl

Full URL to this channel (string?, example: 'https://www.adweek.com/feed/').

Make sure to pass different ones to rss and atom when you build both!

You should define this.

description

Short description of the channel (string?, example: Album Reviews).

You should define this.

lang

BCP 47 language tag representing the language of the whole channel (string?, example: 'fr-BE').

You should define this.

author

Optional author of the whole channel (string or Author).

Either string, in which case it’s as passing {name: string}. Or an author object.

tags

Categories of the channel (Array<string>?, example: ['JavaScript', 'React']).

Enclosure

Media (TypeScript type).

Fields
url

Full URL to the resource (string, required, example: 'http://dallas.example.com/joebob_050689.mp3').

size

Resource size in bytes (number, required, example: 24986239).

type

Mime type of the resource (string, required, example: 'audio/mpeg').

Entry

Data on a single item (TypeScript type).

Fields
title

Title of the item (string?, example: 'Playboi Carti: Whole Lotta Red').

Either title, description, or descriptionHtml must be set.

description

Either the whole post or an excerpt of it (string?, example: 'Lorem').

Should be plain text. descriptionHtml is preferred over plain text description.

Either title, description, or descriptionHtml must be set.

descriptionHtml

Either the whole post or an excerpt of it (string?, example: '<p>Lorem</p>').

Should be serialized HTML. descriptionHtml is preferred over plain text description.

Either title, description, or descriptionHtml must be set.

author

Entry version of channel.author.

You should define this.

For atom, it is required to either set channel.author or set author on all entries.

url

Full URL of this entry on the site (string?, example: 'https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/roberta-flack-first-take').

published

When the entry was first published (Date or value for new Date(x), optional).

modified

When the entry was last modified (Date or value for new Date(x), optional).

tags

Categories of the entry (Array<string>?, example: ['laravel', 'debugging']).

enclosure

Attached media (Enclosure?).

Types

This package is fully typed with TypeScript. It exports the additional types Author, Channel, Enclosure, and Entry.

Compatibility

Projects maintained by the unified collective are compatible with maintained versions of Node.js.

When we cut a new major release, we drop support for unmaintained versions of Node. This means we try to keep the current release line, xast-util-feed@^2, compatible with Node.js 16.

Security

XML can be a dangerous language: don’t trust user-provided data.

Related

Contribute

See contributing.md in syntax-tree/.github for ways to get started. See support.md for ways to get help.

This project has a code of conduct. By interacting with this repository, organization, or community you agree to abide by its terms.

License

MIT © Titus Wormer

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