Feed Extractor (RSS, Atom & JSON Feed Parser)

Extract RSS, Atom, and JSON Feed data from any feed URL and return clean, structured JSON with feed metadata and entries. Use it to convert RSS to JSON, monitor feeds for updates, or power content aggregation and automation.

What this actor does

• Parses RSS, Atom, and JSON Feed URLs
• Returns normalized output (feed metadata + entries/items)
• Helps you monitor updates and build automations from feeds
• No API keys required for public feeds
• Saves results to the actor run dataset (easy export to JSON/CSV)

If you’re searching for an “RSS to JSON converter”, “RSS feed parser”, “Atom feed parser”, “JSON Feed parser”, or “podcast RSS extractor”, this actor is built for exactly that workflow.

What you get in the output

• Feed metadata: title, description, link, language, generator, published (when available)
• Entries/items: id, title, link, description, published (when available)
• entryCount and the effective options used for the run

By default, the actor saves:

• Feed summary to the main run dataset (1 row)
• Entries/items to a separate dataset (1 row per entry) for easier exporting and automation

How to use

Provide a feed URL (RSS/Atom/JSON Feed). Optionally tune normalization, date format, description length, and request headers.

Input Example

{
  "url": "https://feeds.bbci.co.uk/news/rss.xml",
  "splitEntriesToDataset": true,
  "entriesDatasetName": "feed-entries",
  "normalization": true,
  "useISODateFormat": true,
  "descriptionMaxLen": 250,
  "baseUrl": "https://www.bbc.co.uk",
  "headers": {
    "User-Agent": "Mozilla/5.0"
  }
}

Output Example

{
  "url": "https://feeds.bbci.co.uk/news/rss.xml",
  "title": "BBC News - World",
  "link": "https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world/",
  "description": "BBC News - World",
  "language": "en-gb",
  "published": "2024-12-19T12:30:00.000Z",
  "entryCount": 1,
  "entriesDatasetName": "feed-entries",
  "normalization": true,
  "useISODateFormat": true,
  "descriptionMaxLen": 250
}

Entry Row Example (saved to entriesDatasetName)

{
  "feedUrl": "https://feeds.bbci.co.uk/news/rss.xml",
  "feedTitle": "BBC News - World",
  "id": "https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-68678901",
  "title": "Ukraine war: Zelenskyy says victory is 'inevitable' despite Russian advances",
  "link": "https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-68678901",
  "published": "2024-12-19T12:30:00.000Z"
}

Input parameters

• url (required): The URL of the RSS/Atom/JSON Feed to extract
• splitEntriesToDataset (optional): Save each entry as a separate dataset row (default: true)
• entriesDatasetName (optional): Dataset name for entry rows (default: feed-entries)
• includeEntriesInFeedDataset (optional): Also include the full entries array in the main output item (default: false)
• normalization (optional): Normalize fields for consistent output (default: true)
• useISODateFormat (optional): Convert dates to ISO-8601 when possible (default: true)
• descriptionMaxLen (optional): Max characters for descriptions (default: 250, 0 = no truncation)
• baseUrl (optional): Base URL to resolve relative links from the feed
• headers (optional): Additional HTTP headers as key-value pairs (useful for stricter servers)
• userAgent (optional): Convenience field to set a User-Agent header

Popular use cases

• RSS monitoring: Track updates from blogs, news sites, releases, and changelogs
• Content aggregation: Combine multiple feeds into a single dataset for downstream processing
• Newsletters: Pull items from RSS feeds and prepare content for email campaigns
• Podcast feeds: Extract episodes and metadata from podcast RSS
• Automation: Trigger workflows when new items appear in a feed

Notes

• This actor parses feeds (RSS/Atom/JSON Feed). It does not crawl a website and “discover” a feed for you.
• Some feeds omit fields (like published); the output reflects what the feed provides.

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Built for practical RSS/Atom/JSON Feed extraction on Apify.