How to parse an RSS feed using JavaScript?

Question

Parsing the Feed

With jQuery's jFeed

_{(Don't really recommend that one, see the other options.)}

jQuery.getFeed({
   url     : FEED_URL,
   success : function (feed) {
      console.log(feed.title);
      // do more stuff here
   }
});

With jQuery's Built-in XML Support

$.get(FEED_URL, function (data) {
    $(data).find("entry").each(function () { // or "item" or whatever suits your feed
        var el = $(this);

        console.log("------------------------");
        console.log("title      : " + el.find("title").text());
        console.log("author     : " + el.find("author").text());
        console.log("description: " + el.find("description").text());
    });
});

With jQuery and the Google AJAX Feed API

$.ajax({
  url      : document.location.protocol + '//ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/services/feed/load?v=1.0&num=10&callback=?&q=' + encodeURIComponent(FEED_URL),
  dataType : 'json',
  success  : function (data) {
    if (data.responseData.feed && data.responseData.feed.entries) {
      $.each(data.responseData.feed.entries, function (i, e) {
        console.log("------------------------");
        console.log("title      : " + e.title);
        console.log("author     : " + e.author);
        console.log("description: " + e.description);
      });
    }
  }
});

But that means you're relient on them being online and reachable.

---

Building Content

Once you've successfully extracted the information you need from the feed, you could create DocumentFragments (with document.createDocumentFragment() containing the elements (created with document.createElement()) you'll want to inject to display your data.

---

Injecting the content

Select the container element that you want on the page and append your document fragments to it, and simply use innerHTML to replace its content entirely.

Something like:

$('#rss-viewer').append(aDocumentFragmentEntry);

or:

$('#rss-viewer')[0].innerHTML = aDocumentFragmentOfAllEntries.innerHTML;

---

Test Data

Using this question's feed, which as of this writing gives:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<feed xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom" xmlns:creativeCommons="http://backend.userland.com/creativeCommonsRssModule" xmlns:re="http://purl.org/atompub/rank/1.0">
    <title type="text">How to parse a RSS feed using javascript? - Stack Overflow</title>
    <link rel="self" href="https://stackoverflow.com/feeds/question/10943544" type="application/atom+xml" />
        <link rel="hub" href="http://pubsubhubbub.appspot.com/" />        
    <link rel="alternate" href="https://stackoverflow.com/q/10943544" type="text/html" />
    <subtitle>most recent 30 from stackoverflow.com</subtitle>
    <updated>2012-06-08T06:36:47Z</updated>
    <id>https://stackoverflow.com/feeds/question/10943544</id>
    <creativeCommons:license>http://www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/rdf</creativeCommons:license> 
    <entry>
        <id>https://stackoverflow.com/q/10943544</id>
        <re:rank scheme="http://stackoverflow.com">2</re:rank>
        <title type="text">How to parse a RSS feed using javascript?</title>
        <category scheme="https://stackoverflow.com/feeds/question/10943544/tags" term="javascript"/><category scheme="https://stackoverflow.com/feeds/question/10943544/tags" term="html5"/><category scheme="https://stackoverflow.com/feeds/question/10943544/tags" term="jquery-mobile"/>
        <author>
            <name>Thiru</name>
            <uri>https://stackoverflow.com/users/1126255</uri>
        </author>
        <link rel="alternate" href="https://stackoverflow.com/questions/10943544/how-to-parse-a-rss-feed-using-javascript" />
        <published>2012-06-08T05:34:16Z</published>
        <updated>2012-06-08T06:35:22Z</updated>
        <summary type="html">
            &lt;p&gt;I need to parse the RSS-Feed(XML version2.0) using XML and I want to display the parsed detail in HTML page, I tried in many ways. But its not working. My system is running under proxy, since I am new to this field, I don&#39;t know whether it is possible or not. If any one knows please help me on this. Thanks in advance.&lt;/p&gt;

        </summary>
    </entry>
    <entry>
        <id>https://stackoverflow.com/questions/10943544/-/10943610#10943610</id>
        <re:rank scheme="http://stackoverflow.com">1</re:rank>
        <title type="text">Answer by haylem for How to parse a RSS feed using javascript?</title>
        <author>
            <name>haylem</name>
            <uri>https://stackoverflow.com/users/453590</uri>
        </author>    
        <link rel="alternate" href="https://stackoverflow.com/questions/10943544/how-to-parse-a-rss-feed-using-javascript/10943610#10943610" />
        <published>2012-06-08T05:43:24Z</published>   
        <updated>2012-06-08T06:35:22Z</updated>
        <summary type="html">&lt;h1&gt;Parsing the Feed&lt;/h1&gt;

&lt;h3&gt;With jQuery&#39;s jFeed&lt;/h3&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Try this, with the &lt;a href=&quot;http://plugins.jquery.com/project/jFeed&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;jFeed&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.jquery.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;jQuery&lt;/a&gt; plug-in&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;jQuery.getFeed({
   url     : FEED_URL,
   success : function (feed) {
      console.log(feed.title);
      // do more stuff here
   }
});
&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;

&lt;h3&gt;With jQuery&#39;s Built-in XML Support&lt;/h3&gt;

&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;$.get(FEED_URL, function (data) {
    $(data).find(&quot;entry&quot;).each(function () { // or &quot;item&quot; or whatever suits your feed
        var el = $(this);

        console.log(&quot;------------------------&quot;);
        console.log(&quot;title      : &quot; + el.find(&quot;title&quot;).text());
        console.log(&quot;author     : &quot; + el.find(&quot;author&quot;).text());
        console.log(&quot;description: &quot; + el.find(&quot;description&quot;).text());
    });
});
&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;

&lt;h3&gt;With jQuery and the Google AJAX APIs&lt;/h3&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Otherwise, &lt;a href=&quot;https://developers.google.com/feed/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Google&#39;s AJAX Feed API&lt;/a&gt; allows you to get the feed as a JSON object:&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;$.ajax({
  url      : document.location.protocol + &#39;//ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/services/feed/load?v=1.0&amp;amp;num=10&amp;amp;callback=?&amp;amp;q=&#39; + encodeURIComponent(FEED_URL),
  dataType : &#39;json&#39;,
  success  : function (data) {
    if (data.responseData.feed &amp;amp;&amp;amp; data.responseData.feed.entries) {
      $.each(data.responseData.feed.entries, function (i, e) {
        console.log(&quot;------------------------&quot;);
        console.log(&quot;title      : &quot; + e.title);
        console.log(&quot;author     : &quot; + e.author);
        console.log(&quot;description: &quot; + e.description);
      });
    }
  }
});
&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;

&lt;p&gt;But that means you&#39;re relient on them being online and reachable.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;hr&gt;

&lt;h1&gt;Building Content&lt;/h1&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Once you&#39;ve successfully extracted the information you need from the feed, you need to create document fragments containing the elements you&#39;ll want to inject to display your data.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;hr&gt;

&lt;h1&gt;Injecting the content&lt;/h1&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Select the container element that you want on the page and append your document fragments to it, and simply use innerHTML to replace its content entirely.&lt;/p&gt;
</summary>
    </entry></feed>

Executions

Using jQuery's Built-in XML Support

Invoking:

$.get('https://stackoverflow.com/feeds/question/10943544', function (data) {
    $(data).find("entry").each(function () { // or "item" or whatever suits your feed
        var el = $(this);

        console.log("------------------------");
        console.log("title      : " + el.find("title").text());
        console.log("author     : " + el.find("author").text());
        console.log("description: " + el.find("description").text());
    });
});

Prints out:

------------------------
title      : How to parse a RSS feed using javascript?
author     : 
            Thiru
            https://stackoverflow.com/users/1126255

description: 
------------------------
title      : Answer by haylem for How to parse a RSS feed using javascript?
author     : 
            haylem
            https://stackoverflow.com/users/453590

description: 

Using jQuery and the Google AJAX APIs

Invoking:

$.ajax({
  url      : document.location.protocol + '//ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/services/feed/load?v=1.0&num=10&callback=?&q=' + encodeURIComponent('https://stackoverflow.com/feeds/question/10943544'),
  dataType : 'json',
  success  : function (data) {
    if (data.responseData.feed && data.responseData.feed.entries) {
      $.each(data.responseData.feed.entries, function (i, e) {
        console.log("------------------------");
        console.log("title      : " + e.title);
        console.log("author     : " + e.author);
        console.log("description: " + e.description);
      });
    }
  }
});

Prints out:

------------------------
title      : How to parse a RSS feed using javascript?
author     : Thiru
description: undefined
------------------------
title      : Answer by haylem for How to parse a RSS feed using javascript?
author     : haylem
description: undefined

Another deprecated (thanks to @daylight) option, and the easiest for me (this is what I'm using for SpokenToday.info):

The Google Feed API without using JQuery and with only 2 steps:

1. Import the library:

   <script type="text/javascript" src="https://www.google.com/jsapi"></script>
   <script type="text/javascript">google.load("feeds", "1");</script>
   

2. Find/Load feeds (documentation):

   var feed = new google.feeds.Feed('http://www.google.com/trends/hottrends/atom/feed?pn=p1');
   feed.load(function (data) {
       // Parse data depending on the specified response format, default is JSON.
       console.dir(data);
   });
   

3. To parse data, check documentation about the response format.

If you are looking for a simple and free alternative to Google Feed API for your rss widget then rss2json.com could be a suitable solution for that.

You may try to see how it works on a sample code from the api documentation below:

google.load("feeds", "1");

    function initialize() {
      var feed = new google.feeds.Feed("https://news.ycombinator.com/rss");
      feed.load(function(result) {
        if (!result.error) {
          var container = document.getElementById("feed");
          for (var i = 0; i < result.feed.entries.length; i++) {
            var entry = result.feed.entries[i];
            var div = document.createElement("div");
            div.appendChild(document.createTextNode(entry.title));
            container.appendChild(div);
          }
        }
      });
    }
    google.setOnLoadCallback(initialize);

<html>
  <head>    
     <script src="https://rss2json.com/gfapi.js"></script>
  </head>
  <body>
    <p><b>Result from the API:</b></p>
    <div id="feed"></div>
  </body>
</html>

For anyone else reading this (in 2019 onwards) unfortunately most JS RSS reading implementations don't now work. Firstly Google API has shut down so this is no longer an option and because of the CORS security policy you generally cannot now request RSS feeds cross-domains.

Using the example on https://www.raymondcamden.com/2015/12/08/parsing-rss-feeds-in-javascript-options (2015) I get the following:

Access to XMLHttpRequest at 'https://feeds.feedburner.com/raymondcamdensblog?format=xml' from origin 'MYSITE' has been blocked by CORS policy: No 'Access-Control-Allow-Origin' header is present on the requested resource.

This is correct and is a security precaution by the end website but does now mean that the answers above are unlikely to work.

My workaround will probably be to parse the RSS feed through PHP and allow the javascript to access my PHP rather than trying to access the end-destination feed itself.

If you want to use a plain javascript API, there is a good example at https://github.com/hongkiat/js-rss-reader/

The complete description at https://www.hongkiat.com/blog/rss-reader-in-javascript/

It uses fetch method as a global method that asynchronously fetches a resource. Below is a snap of code:

fetch(websiteUrl).then((res) => {
  res.text().then((htmlTxt) => {
    var domParser = new DOMParser()
    let doc = domParser.parseFromString(htmlTxt, 'text/html')
    var feedUrl = doc.querySelector('link[type="application/rss+xml"]').href
  })
}).catch(() => console.error('Error in fetching the website'))

I was so exasperated by many misleading articles and answers that I wrote my own RSS reader: https://gouessej.wordpress.com/2020/06/28/comment-creer-un-lecteur-rss-en-javascript-how-to-create-a-rss-reader-in-javascript/

You can use AJAX requests to fetch the RSS files but it will work if and only if you use a CORS proxy. I'll try to write my own CORS proxy to give you a more robust solution. In the meantime, it works, I deployed it on my server under Debian Linux.

My solution doesn't use JQuery, I use only plain Javascript standard APIs with no third party libraries and it's supposed to work even with Microsoft Internet Explorer 11.