XML to JSON parser #16

[Immutablevoid]

DO NOT MERGE WITHOUT THE APPROVAL OF @c3ho. @c3ho is the person who originally wanted to work on this issue first.

This code converts XML blog feeds to JSON. The purpose of this code is to get something started, this code is not concrete. Hopefully will be edited or trash by @c3ho (Waiting on feedback).

How to run the parser:
npm install rss-to-json
node parser.js

[humphd]

I like how you've jumped in and got something working that let's us move forward. Good job.

I wonder if rss-to-json is the best choice for this. It has no tests, and parsing RSS and ATOM feeds is tricky to get right. I wonder if we should evaluate some other libs as well, maybe https://www.npmjs.com/package/feedparser, https://www.npmjs.com/package/rss-parser, https://www.npmjs.com/package/htmlparser2, etc. I think the usual suggested one to use is https://www.npmjs.com/package/feedparser, which also provides streaming support (i.e., better for memory consumption).

[Immutablevoid]

Possible packages for parsing (I will be updating this list as more feedback comes in):

Packages	Note	Recommend? ❌ ✔️
rss-parser	I found the package rss-parser doesn't show all the contents of the blog (Link to my blog for more information: https://wordpress.com/block-editor/post/paulopensourceblog.wordpress.com/1137) It would be great if someone was able to get it working but it didn't for me @ImmutableBox	❌
rss-to-json	Does not work with ATOM feeds @ImmutableBox	❌
feedparser	Pull request created by @c3ho: #37	🔨
htmlparser2	Needs researching. (Feel free to contribute)	🔨

Reviewing the code I committed 9fb7b34, I found that package rss-to-json does not work with ATOM feeds, I will try researching the other packages as suggested.

[c3ho]

@ImmutableBox I put up a simple PR with the prof's suggested library. Feel free to review it here #37, I welcome any changes.

[humphd]

@ImmutableBox now that #37 is up, maybe we should close this, and iterate there?

[Immutablevoid]

Yup, I will close the pull request. Reference #37 for continuation.