Create an RSS feed for a web page which does not offer its own.
You can also use the resulting feed with other services which take RSS as input, such as our Full-Text RSS and PDF Newspaper tools.
When making HTTP requests, you can pass the following parameters to extract.php (either in a GET request or POST request). For most uses, supplying the page URL (url) and a selector (either in_id_or_class or item) is enough.
We do not provide form fields for all of these parameters, but you can modify the URL in your browser after clicking 'Preview' to use them. See our examples.
| Parameter | Value | Description |
|---|---|---|
| url | string (URL) | Web page URL containing links which we want to extract for our RSS feed. This is required. |
| in_id_or_class | string (attribute value) | Find links inside elements whose id or class attribute matches this value. This translates to the following XPath: //a[@href and ancestor-or-self::*[@id="string" or contains(concat(" ",normalize-space(@class)," "), " string ")]] |
| item | string (CSS selector) | Look inside element(s) matching this CSS expression (for example: div.news .item). Cannot be used in combination with in_id_or_class. |
| item_title | string (CSS selector) or 0 | Extract item title from element matching CSS selector. This is applied within the context of elements selected by item. If omitted, the text of the first matching <a> element will be used. If set to 0, titles will not be included in the output. |
| item_url | string (CSS selector), 0 or 1 | Extract item URL from element matching CSS selector. This is applied within the context of elements selected by item. If omitted, the URL of the first matching <a> element will be used. If set to 0, URLs will not be included in the output. If set to 1, all item URLs will point to the input URL. |
| item_desc | string (CSS selector) | Extract item description from element matching CSS selector. This is applied within the context of elements selected by item. If omitted, the generated feed will not include item descriptions. |
| item_date | string (CSS selector) | Extract item date from element matching CSS selector. This is applied within the context of elements selected by item. If omitted, the generated feed will not include item date. |
| url_contains[] | string (URL substring) | Filter out any item whose URL does not contain one of these substrings. This can appear multiple times. Example: /article/ |
| text_contains[] | string (word or phrase) | Filter out any item whose title or description does not contain any of the supplied words or phrases. This can appear multiple times. |
| unique_url | 1 (default), 0 | If multiple matching items have the same URL, only the first encountered will be kept. Set to 0 to keep all matching URLs. Note: this is enabled by default, but always disabled when you ask for URLs to be excluded from output (item_url=0). |
| unique_title | 1 (default), 0 | If multiple matching items have the same title, only the first encountered will be kept. Set to 0 to keep all matching titles. Note: this is enabled by default, but always disabled when you ask for titles to be excluded from output (item_title=0) |
| strip | string (CSS selector) | Remove elements matching CSS selector. This will be processed before we start looking for items. To strip multiple elements, use commas. For example: .header,.footer |
| strip_if_url[] | string | Filter out any item whose URL contains any of the supplied words or phrases. This can appear multiple times. |
| strip_if_text[] | string | Filter out any item whose title or description contain any of the supplied words or phrases. This can appear multiple times. |
| feed_title | string | The feed title to use in the generated feed. If omitted, we'll use whatever's in the <title> element of the web page requested. Note: this should be the actual title, not a selector. |
| max | number (limit: 10) | The maximum number of items to return. The limit can be changed in the config file. |
| format | rss (default), json | By default the output will be formatted as RSS 2.0. Set this to JSON if you prefer that. |
| order | document (default), reverse | Results are returned in document order by default (ie. in the order they appear in the source HTML). Set this to 'reverse' to reverse it. |
| parser | html5 (default), libxml | Libxml is a slightly faster parser, but might not handle all pages correctly. If speed is important for you, try changing the parser to libxml - in most cases the results should be the same. |
| saved[] | string | Saved request parameters. In the config file, you can associate a set of request parameters with a given name. You can then pass that name in the request instead of the request parameters. This is useful if you want to subscribe to a generated feed and then update it later without changing the feed URL. |
Required parameters: url must be supplied.
In addition to the parameters above, there's a configuration file which you can edit.
Features include:
To change the configuration, save a copy of config.php as custom_config.php and make any changes you like to it.
If everything works fine, feel free to modify this page by following the steps below:
Next time you load this page, it will automatically load custom_index.php instead.
Check our help centre if you need help. You can also email us at help@fivefilters.org.
Thanks for downloading and setting up Feed Creator. This software is developed and maintained by FiveFilters.org. If you find it useful, but have not purchased this from us, please consider supporting us by purchasing from FiveFilters.org.