Rss Feed Monitor

When an RSS feed breaks, it usually breaks quietly.

Articles get edited. Items disappear. Publishing slows down. Structure changes. Most monitors won’t tell you — because the feed is still “up.”

RSS Feed Monitor tracks feed behavior over time and alerts you when something isn’t right.

Built for systems that depend on RSS in production.

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What It Watches For

This actor doesn’t just check availability. It compares feed snapshots across runs and detects:

• Feed unreachable or timing out
• Publishing stalls (no new items within threshold)
• Mass content drift
• Bulk item removal
• Individual content edits
• Metadata or GUID instability

Every run produces structured events and updates a health score that reflects long-term stability.

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How It Works

1. Fetch the feed.
2. Normalize and fingerprint items.
3. Compare with the previous snapshot.
4. Emit events for meaningful changes.
5. Update the feed’s health score.
6. Store state for the next run.

The result is a continuous integrity check — not a one-time scrape.

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Input

{
  "feedUrl": "https://hnrss.org/frontpage",
  "feedId": "optional-id",
  "pubDateStallThresholdHours": 48,
  "massContentDriftThresholdPercent": 30,
  "bulkRemovalThresholdPercent": 40,
  "maxStoredFingerprints": 200,
  "requestTimeoutMs": 15000
}

Only feedUrl is required.

You can adjust thresholds based on how volatile or stable your feed normally is.

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Output (Webhook Payload)

Each run returns a structured run_summary object:

{
  "type": "run_summary",
  "feedId": "string",
  "feedUrl": "string",
  "runId": "string",
  "timestamp": "ISO date",
  "summary": {
    "totalEvents": 0,
    "critical": 0,
    "warning": 0,
    "info": 0
  },
  "health": {
    "previous": 100,
    "current": 100,
    "delta": 0
  },
  "events": [],
  "metrics": {
    "previousItemCount": 0,
    "currentItemCount": 0,
    "overlapCount": 0,
    "processingTimeMs": 0
  }
}

The structure is stable and designed for automation.

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How To Use The Output

Most systems only need a few fields:

• summary.critical > 0 → trigger an alert
• health.delta < 0 → degradation detected
• health.current < threshold → sustained instability
• Specific eventType → route to the right team

You can integrate this into alert pipelines, dashboards, logging systems, or automated workflows.

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Slack Webhook Example

You can send alerts directly to Slack.

Step 1: Create Slack Incoming Webhook

Go to Slack → Apps → Incoming Webhooks

Create a webhook URL

Step 2: Create Apify Webhook

Event: ACTOR.RUN.SUCCEEDED

Target URL: your Slack webhook URL

Step 3: Use This Payload Template

{
  "text": "*RSS Feed Monitor*",
  "blocks": [
    {
      "type": "section",
      "text": {
        "type": "mrkdwn",
        "text": "*Feed:* {{feedUrl}}\n*Health:* {{health.current}} (Δ {{health.delta}})"
      }
    },
    {
      "type": "section",
      "text": {
        "type": "mrkdwn",
        "text": "*Critical:* {{summary.critical}}\n*Warnings:* {{summary.warning}}"
      }
    }
  ]
}

You can choose to only notify Slack when critical events occur.

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Health Score

Health ranges from 0 to 100.

• Drops when warnings or critical events occur
• Recovers gradually during stable periods
• Recovery is time-based, not run-count based
• Always clamped within bounds

It gives you a simple signal for long-term feed reliability.

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Scheduling

For most feeds, run every 30–60 minutes.

Higher-frequency publishers may need shorter intervals. Low-volume blogs can run less often.

Recovery is time-aware, so running it more frequently does not artificially inflate health.

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Who This Is For

• News aggregators
• Feed resellers
• Data ingestion systems
• SEO monitoring teams
• Compliance workflows
• Platforms relying on third-party RSS

If your system depends on consistent feed behavior, this gives you early warning before problems escalate.

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In Short

Uptime checks tell you if a feed is reachable.

RSS Feed Monitor tells you if it’s healthy.