Parse RSS with jQuery

Question

WARNING

The Google Feed API is officially deprecated and doesn't work anymore!

---

No need for a whole plugin. This will return your RSS as a JSON object to a callback function:

function parseRSS(url, callback) {
  $.ajax({
    url: document.location.protocol + '//ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/services/feed/load?v=1.0&num=10&callback=?&q=' + encodeURIComponent(url),
    dataType: 'json',
    success: function(data) {
      callback(data.responseData.feed);
    }
  });
}

Use jFeed - a jQuery RSS/Atom plugin. According to the docs, it's as simple as:

jQuery.getFeed({
   url: 'rss.xml',
   success: function(feed) {
      alert(feed.title);
   }
});

For those of us coming to the discussion late, starting with 1.5 jQuery has built-in xml parsing capabilities, which makes it pretty easy to do this without plugins or 3rd party services. It has a parseXml function, and will also auto-parse xml when using the $.get function. E.g.:

$.get(rssurl, function(data) {
    var $xml = $(data);
    $xml.find("item").each(function() {
        var $this = $(this),
            item = {
                title: $this.find("title").text(),
                link: $this.find("link").text(),
                description: $this.find("description").text(),
                pubDate: $this.find("pubDate").text(),
                author: $this.find("author").text()
        }
        //Do something with item here...
    });
});

jFeed doesn't work in IE.

Use zRSSFeed. Had it working in 5 minutes

Update (Oct 15, 2019)

I extracted the core logic from jquery-rss to a new library called Vanilla RSS which is using the fetch API and can work without any additional dependencies:

const RSS = require('vanilla-rss');
const rss = new RSS(
    document.querySelector("#your-div"),
    "http://www.recruiter.com/feed/career.xml",
    { 
      // options go here
    }
);
rss.render().then(() => {
  console.log('Everything is loaded and rendered');
});

Original

post:

You can also use jquery-rss, which comes with nice templating and is super easy to use:

$("#your-div").rss("http://www.recruiter.com/feed/career.xml", {
    limit: 3,
    layoutTemplate: '<ul class="inline">{entries}</ul>',
    entryTemplate: '<li><a href="{url}">[{author}@{date}] {title}</a><br/>{shortBodyPlain}</li>'
})

yields (as of Sept 18, 2013):

<div id="your-div">
    <ul class="inline">
    <entries></entries>
    </ul>
    <ul class="inline">
        <li><a href="http://www.recruiter.com/i/when-to-go-over-a-recruiter%e2%80%99s-head/">[@Tue, 10 Sep 2013 22:23:51 -0700] When to Go Over a Recruiter's Head</a><br>Job seekers tend to have a certain "fear" of recruiters and hiring managers, and I mean fear in the reverence and respect ...</li>
        <li><a href="http://www.recruiter.com/i/the-perfect-job/">[@Tue, 10 Sep 2013 14:52:40 -0700] The Perfect Job</a><br>Having long ago dealt with the "perfect resume" namely God's, in a previous article of mine, it makes sense to consider the ...</li>
        <li><a href="http://www.recruiter.com/i/unemployment-benefits-applications-remain-near-5-year-low-decline-again/">[@Mon, 09 Sep 2013 12:49:17 -0700] Unemployment Benefits Applications Remain Near 5-Year Low, Decline Again</a><br>As reported by the U.S. Department of Labor, the number of workers seeking unemployment benefits continued to sit near ...</li>
    </ul>
</div>

See http://jsfiddle.net/sdepold/ozq2dn9e/1/ for a working example.

Using JFeed

function getFeed(sender, uri) {
    jQuery.getFeed({
        url: 'proxy.php?url=' + uri,
        success: function(feed) {
            jQuery(sender).append('<h2>'
            + '<a href="'
            + feed.link
            + '">'
            + feed.title
            + '</a>'
            + '</h2>');

            var html = '';

            for(var i = 0; i < feed.items.length && i < 5; i++) {

                var item = feed.items[i];

                html += '<h3>'
                + '<a href="'
                + item.link
                + '">'
                + item.title
                + '</a>'
                + '</h3>';

                html += '<div class="updated">'
                + item.updated
                + '</div>';

                html += '<div>'
                + item.description
                + '</div>';
            }

            jQuery(sender).append(html);
        }    
    });
}

<div id="getanewbrowser">
  <script type="text/javascript">
    getFeed($("#getanewbrowser"), 'http://feeds.feedburner.com/getanewbrowser')
  </script>
</div>