astro/packages/astro-rss

@astrojs/rss 📖

This package brings fast RSS feed generation to blogs and other content sites built with Astro. For more information about RSS feeds in general, see aboutfeeds.com.

Installation

Install the @astrojs/rss package into any Astro project using your preferred package manager:

# npm
npm i @astrojs/rss
# yarn
yarn add @astrojs/rss
# pnpm
pnpm i @astrojs/rss

Example usage

The @astrojs/rss package provides helpers for generating RSS feeds within Astro endpoints. This unlocks both static builds and on-demand generation when using an SSR adapter.

For instance, say you need to generate an RSS feed for all posts under src/content/blog/ using content collections.

Start by adding a site to your project's astro.config for link generation. Then, create an rss.xml.js file under your project's src/pages/ directory, and use getCollection() to generate a feed from all documents in the blog collection:

// src/pages/rss.xml.js
import rss from '@astrojs/rss';
import { getCollection } from 'astro:content';

export async function GET(context) {
  const posts = await getCollection('blog');
  return rss({
    title: 'Buzz’s Blog',
    description: 'A humble Astronaut’s guide to the stars',
    // Pull in your project "site" from the endpoint context
    // https://docs.astro.build/en/reference/api-reference/#contextsite
    site: context.site,
    items: posts.map((post) => ({
      // Assumes all RSS feed item properties are in post frontmatter
      ...post.data,
      // Generate a `url` from each post `slug`
      // This assumes all blog posts are rendered as `/blog/[slug]` routes
      // https://docs.astro.build/en/guides/content-collections/#generating-pages-from-content-collections
      link: `/blog/${post.slug}/`,
    })),
  });
}

Read Astro's RSS docs for more on using content collections, and instructions for globbing entries in /src/pages/.

rss() configuration options

The rss default export offers a number of configuration options. Here's a quick reference:

export function GET(context) {
  return rss({
    // `<title>` field in output xml
    title: 'Buzz’s Blog',
    // `<description>` field in output xml
    description: 'A humble Astronaut’s guide to the stars',
    // provide a base URL for RSS <item> links
    site: context.site,
    // list of `<item>`s in output xml
    items: [],
    // (optional) absolute path to XSL stylesheet in your project
    stylesheet: '/rss-styles.xsl',
    // (optional) inject custom xml
    customData: '<language>en-us</language>',
    // (optional) add arbitrary metadata to opening <rss> tag
    xmlns: { h: 'http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/' },
    // (optional) add trailing slashes to URLs (default: true)
    trailingSlash: false,
  });
}

title

Type: string (required)

The <title> attribute of your RSS feed's output xml.

description

Type: string (required)

The <description> attribute of your RSS feed's output xml.

site

Type: string (required)

The base URL to use when generating RSS item links. We recommend using the endpoint context object, which includes the site configured in your project's astro.config.*:

import rss from '@astrojs/rss';

export const GET = (context) =>
  rss({
    site: context.site,
    // ...
  });

items

Type: RSSFeedItem[] (required)

A list of formatted RSS feed items. See Astro's RSS items documentation for usage examples to choose the best option for you.

When providing a formatted RSS item list, see the RSSFeedItem type reference.

stylesheet

Type: string (optional)

An absolute path to an XSL stylesheet in your project. If you don’t have an RSS stylesheet in mind, we recommend the Pretty Feed v3 default stylesheet, which you can download from GitHub and save into your project's public/ directory.

customData

Type: string (optional)

A string of valid XML to be injected between your feed's <description> and <item> tags. This is commonly used to set a language for your feed:

import rss from '@astrojs/rss';

export const GET = () => rss({
    ...
    customData: '<language>en-us</language>',
  });

xmlns

Type: Record<string, string> (optional)

An object mapping a set of xmlns suffixes to strings of metadata on the opening <rss> tag.

For example, this object:

rss({
  ...
  xmlns: { h: 'http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/' },
})

Will inject the following XML:

<rss xmlns:h="http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/"...

content

The content key contains the full content of the post as HTML. This allows you to make your entire post content available to RSS feed readers.

Note: Whenever you're using HTML content in XML, we suggest using a package like sanitize-html in order to make sure that your content is properly sanitized, escaped, and encoded.

See our RSS documentation for examples using content collections and glob imports.

trailingSlash

Type: boolean (optional) Default: true

By default, the library will add trailing slashes to the emitted URLs. To prevent this behavior, add trailingSlash: false to the rss function.

import rss from '@astrojs/rss';

export const GET = () =>
  rss({
    trailingSlash: false,
  });

RSSFeedItem

An RSSFeedItem is a single item in the list of items in your feed. It represents a story, with link, title, and pubDate fields. There are further optional fields defined below. You can also check the definitions for the fields in the RSS spec.

An example feed item might look like:

const item = {
  title: 'Alpha Centauri: so close you can touch it',
  link: '/blog/alpha-centuari',
  pubDate: new Date('2023-06-04'),
  description:
    'Alpha Centauri is a triple star system, containing Proxima Centauri, the closest star to our sun at only 4.24 light-years away.',
  categories: ['stars', 'space'],
};

title

Type: string (optional)

The title of the item in the feed. Optional only if a description is set. Otherwise, required.

link

Type: string (optional)

The URL of the item on the web.

pubDate

Type: Date (optional)

Indicates when the item was published.

description

Type: string (optional)

A synopsis of your item when you are publishing the full content of the item in the content field. The description may alternatively be the full content of the item in the feed if you are not using the content field (entity-coded HTML is permitted). Optional only if a title is set. Otherwise, required.

content

Type: string (optional)

The full text content of the item suitable for presentation as HTML. If used, you should also provide a short article summary in the description field.

See the recommendations from the RSS spec for how to use and differentiate between description and content.

categories

Type: string[] (optional)

A list of any tags or categories to categorize your content. They will be output as multiple <category> elements.

author

Type: string (optional)

The email address of the item author. This is useful for indicating the author of a post on multi-author blogs.

commentsUrl

Type: string (optional)

The URL of a web page that contains comments on the item.

source

Type: object (optional)

An object that defines the title and url of the original feed for items that have been republished from another source. Both are required properties of source for proper attribution.

const item = {
  title: 'Alpha Centauri: so close you can touch it',
  link: '/blog/alpha-centuari',
  pubDate: new Date('2023-06-04'),
  description:
    'Alpha Centauri is a triple star system, containing Proxima Centauri, the closest star to our sun at only 4.24 light-years away.',
  source: {
    title: 'The Galactic Times',
    url: 'https://galactictimes.space/feed.xml',
  },
};

source.title

Type: string (required)

The name of the original feed in which the item was published. (Note that this is the feed's title, not the individual article title.)

source.url

Type: string (required)

The URL of the original feed in which the item was published.

enclosure

Type: object (optional)

An object to specify properties for an included media source (e.g. a podcast) with three required values: url, length, and type.

const item = {
  title: 'Alpha Centauri: so close you can touch it',
  link: '/blog/alpha-centuari',
  pubDate: new Date('2023-06-04'),
  description:
    'Alpha Centauri is a triple star system, containing Proxima Centauri, the closest star to our sun at only 4.24 light-years away.',
  enclosure: {
    url: '/media/alpha-centauri.aac',
    length: 124568,
    type: 'audio/aac',
  },
};

enclosure.url

Type: string (required)

The URL where the media can be found. If the media is hosted outside of your own domain you must provide a full URL.

enclosure.length

Type: number (required)

The size of the file found at the url in bytes.

enclosure.type

Type: string (required)

The MIME type for the media item found at the url.

rssSchema

When using content collections, you can configure your collection schema to enforce expected RSSFeedItem properties. Import and apply rssSchema to ensure that each collection entry produces a valid RSS feed item:

import { defineCollection } from 'astro:content';
import { rssSchema } from '@astrojs/rss';

const blog = defineCollection({
  schema: rssSchema,
});

export const collections = { blog };

If you have an existing schema, you can merge extra properties using extends():

import { defineCollection } from 'astro:content';
import { rssSchema } from '@astrojs/rss';

const blog = defineCollection({
  schema: rssSchema.extends({ extraProperty: z.string() }),
});

pagesGlobToRssItems()

To create an RSS feed from documents in src/pages/, use the pagesGlobToRssItems() helper. This accepts an import.meta.glob result (see Vite documentation) and outputs an array of valid RSSFeedItems.

This function assumes, but does not verify, you are globbing for items inside src/pages/, and all necessary feed properties are present in each document's frontmatter. If you encounter errors, verify each page frontmatter manually.

// src/pages/rss.xml.js
import rss, { pagesGlobToRssItems } from '@astrojs/rss';

export async function GET(context) {
  return rss({
    title: 'Buzz’s Blog',
    description: 'A humble Astronaut’s guide to the stars',
    site: context.site,
    items: await pagesGlobToRssItems(import.meta.glob('./blog/*.{md,mdx}')),
  });
}

getRssString()

As rss() returns a Response, you can also use getRssString() to get the RSS string directly and use it in your own response:

// src/pages/rss.xml.js
import { getRssString } from '@astrojs/rss';

export async function GET(context) {
  const rssString = await getRssString({
    title: 'Buzz’s Blog',
    ...
  });

  return new Response(rssString, {
    headers: {
      'Content-Type': 'application/xml',
    },
  });
}

For more on building with Astro, visit the Astro docs.