FeedSub

FeedSub subscribes to a remote RSS/Atom/JSON feed and notifies you of any new items it reads.

It works by checking the feed every once in a while, comparing the date of the document via a conditional GET if supported. Otherwise it looks for a date tag in the feed. If it's the same as the last date, it stops downloading it and parsing the xml/json. If it's an updated document, then it looks through it top to bottom taking note of all the new items. Once it finds something it has already read, it stops downloading and parsing the document.

Usage

var FeedSub = require('feedsub');

var reader = new FeedSub('http://rss.cnn.com/rss/cnn_latest.rss', {
  interval: 10 // check feed every 10 minutes
});

reader.on('item', function(item) {
  console.log('Got item!');
  console.dir(item);
});

reader.start();

API

new FeedSub(feed, [options])

Creates a new instance of FeedSub. options defaults to.

{
  // number of minutes to wait between checking the feed for new items
  interval: 10,

  // some feeds contain a `ttl` tag that specifies the
  // number of minutes to cache the feed
  // setting this to true will ignore that
  forceInterval: false,

  // if true, calls `reader.start()` on instanstiation
  autoStart: false, 

  // emits items on the very first request
  // after which, it should consider those items read
  emitOnStart: false,

  // keeps track of last date of the feed
  lastDate: null,

  // maximum size of `history` array
  maxHistory: 10,

  // some feeds have a `skipHours` tag with a list of
  // hours in which the feed should not be read.
  // if this is set to true and the feed has that tag, it obeys that rule
  skipHours: false,

  // same as `skipHours`, but with days
  skipDays: false,

  // options object passed to the http(s).get function
  requestOpts: {}
}

FeedSub#read([callback(err, items)])

Reads the feed. Calls callback with possible error or new items discovered if provided. Causes reader to emit new item events.

FeedSub#readInterval([callback(err, items)], interval)

Calls reader.read every interval milliseconds. If callback is an integer, it is considered the interval.

FeedSub#start()

Calls reader.readInterval() with the options.interval from the constructor.

FeedSub#options

Options that were passed to the constructor along with any defaults are kept here.

FeedSub#stop()

Stops the reader from automatically reading the feed.

Event: 'item'

• Object - Item.

Emitted whenever there is a new item.

Event: 'items'

• Array.Object - List of items.

Emits all new items from one request in one array.

Event: 'error'

• Error

Emitted when there is an error downloading or parsing the feed. Not emitted if callback is given for read or readInterval.

Install

npm install feedsub

Tests

Tests are written with mocha

npm test

License

MIT