Generating RSS or JSON – FiveFilters.org

Feed Control can generate RSS and JSON files as your feeds update. These can be used for syndication on third-party news platforms like SmartNews, MSN or Apple News. They can also be used in consumer feed reading applications, web service automation systems like IFTTT, Zapier, Integromat, or as custom integrations with your own applications.

Note: If you're a developer, you might find Feed Control's webhooks integrations more convenient to use.

When to use RSS/JSON output

If the feed's source URL is an existing RSS feed, and it contains the content you need, you might have no need for this feature (simply use the source RSS feed). But if any of the following conditions apply, you might want to enable RSS or JSON generation.

Feed source type is not an RSS feed (ie. you've added a Twitter timeline or used the webpage-to-RSS feature)
Feed expansion is enabled ('fetch full text' checked when adding the feed)
Filters added to exclude certain content

Enabling RSS/JSON output

When you edit a feed's settings, you'll see a tab named "Generate RSS/JSON". Click the tab and use the checkboxes to enable RSS or JSON output. After you've made your changes, click the 'Update Feed' button at the bottom right.

RSS templates

Some platforms require RSS feeds to adhere to their standards. Feed Control offers RSS templates you can apply. For business users, we can create custom templates to make sure the feed contains all the elements you need.

Clean HTML

On the edit screen you can also enable 'Clean HTML' mode so that when Feed Control generates an RSS or JSON file, it replaces the item content with a stripped-down, sanitized version that's safe to display in web applications.

Most news reading applications already sanitize item content, so this is intended for situations where the application consuming the feed doesn't do its own sanitizing, or in cases where you prefer the formatting produced by Feed Control.

Use date item added as publication date

This feature is intended for use with the Webpage-to-RSS feature. When your source is items on a webpage, often the new items pulled in won't have a date associated with them. If you enable this option, Feed Control will use the date and time it detected the new item as its publication date.

This is necessary when the application reading the feed requires item dates be present. IFTTT is an example of a service that recommends feeds include item dates.

This option can also be used with any feed that doesn't include item dates or in situations where you want the item date to be replaced by the date and time the new item was detected by Feed Control.

Feed elements included in the RSS and JSON output

Source feeds can often contain a large number of elements beyond the core elements specified in the RSS spec. Feed Control currently only output a limited number of core elements when producing a feed, excluding enclosure elements and other optional elements.

If such elements are important to you, it's best to rely on the source feed.

Accessing the generated files

When viewing feed details, click on the Generate RSS/JSON tab and you'll see links to files.

The URLs will begin with 'https://cdn.feedcontrol.net/' and end with '.xml' for the RSS output and '.json' for the JSON output.

If you've recently enabled RSS/JSON generation and you're getting a 404 file not found error, select 'Refresh feed' from the 'Select action' dropdown menu on the top right of the feed details view.

Example RSS output

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<rss xmlns:atom="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom" xmlns:content="http://purl.org/rss/1.0/modules/content/" xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/" xmlns:media="http://search.yahoo.com/mrss/" version="2.0">
   <channel>
      <title>Glenn Greenwald</title>
      <link />
      <description>Independent, unencumbered analysis and investigative reporting, captive to no dogma or faction.</description>
      <item>
         <title>The Case For a Pardon of Edward Snowden by President Trump</title>
         <link>https://greenwald.substack.com/p/the-case-for-a-pardon-of-edward-snowden</link>
         <dc:identifier />
         <pubDate>Mon, 14 Dec 2020 23:48:36 +0000</pubDate>
         <dc:creator>Glenn Greenwald</dc:creator>
         <guid>https://greenwald.substack.com/p/the-case-for-a-pardon-of-edward-snowden</guid>
         <description>Edward Snowden speaks via video link at a news conference for the launch of a campaign [...]</description>
         <content:encoded>[HTML content]</content:encoded>
      </item>
      <item>
         <title>Eleições Municipais no Brasil e Joe Biden nos EUA - Aprofundando #01</title>
         <link>https://greenwald.substack.com/p/eleies-municipais-no-brasil-e-joe</link>
         <dc:identifier />
         <pubDate>Sun, 13 Dec 2020 18:28:01 +0000</pubDate>
         <dc:creator>Glenn Greenwald</dc:creator>
         <guid>https://greenwald.substack.com/p/eleies-municipais-no-brasil-e-joe</guid>
         <description>[This is a Portuguese-language podcast and post]No episódio de estréia do podcast [...]</description>
         <content:encoded>[HTML content]</content:encoded>
      </item>
      <item>
         <title>With News of Hunter Biden's Criminal Probe, Recall the Media Outlets That Peddled the [...]</title>
         <link>https://greenwald.substack.com/p/with-news-of-hunter-bidens-criminal-5e6</link>
         <dc:identifier />
         <pubDate>Fri, 11 Dec 2020 17:49:19 +0000</pubDate>
         <dc:creator>Glenn Greenwald</dc:creator>
         <guid>https://greenwald.substack.com/p/with-news-of-hunter-bidens-criminal-5e6</guid>
         <description>Clockwise: Politico, Oct. 19; CNN, Oct. 25; NPR, Oct. 22; The Boston Globe, Oct. 20 [...]</description>
         <content:encoded>[HTML content]</content:encoded>
      </item>
      [...]
   </channel>
</rss>

Note: For readability, output has been truncated in parts, replaced with [HTML content] and [...].

Example JSON output

{
  "rss": {
    "@attributes": {
      "version": "2.0"
    },
    "channel": {
      "title": "Glenn Greenwald",
      "link": "",
      "description": "Independent, unencumbered analysis and investigative reporting, captive to no dogma or faction.",
      "item": [
        {
          "title": "The Case For a Pardon of Edward Snowden by President Trump",
          "link": "https://greenwald.substack.com/p/the-case-for-a-pardon-of-edward-snowden",
          "dc_identifier": null,
          "pubDate": "Mon, 14 Dec 2020 23:48:36 +0000",
          "dc_creator": "Glenn Greenwald",
          "guid": "https://greenwald.substack.com/p/the-case-for-a-pardon-of-edward-snowden",
          "description": "Edward Snowden speaks via video link at a news conference for the launch of a [...]",
          "content_encoded": "[HTML content]"
        },
        {
          "title": "Eleições Municipais no Brasil e Joe Biden nos EUA - Aprofundando #01",
          "link": "https://greenwald.substack.com/p/eleies-municipais-no-brasil-e-joe",
          "dc_identifier": null,
          "pubDate": "Sun, 13 Dec 2020 18:28:01 +0000",
          "dc_creator": "Glenn Greenwald",
          "guid": "https://greenwald.substack.com/p/eleies-municipais-no-brasil-e-joe",
          "description": "[This is a Portuguese-language podcast and post]No episódio de estréia do [...]",
          "content_encoded": "[HTML content]"
        },
        {
          "title": "With News of Hunter Biden's Criminal Probe, Recall the Media Outlets That Peddled the \"Russian Disinformation\" Lie [unlocked]",
          "link": "https://greenwald.substack.com/p/with-news-of-hunter-bidens-criminal-5e6",
          "dc_identifier": null,
          "pubDate": "Fri, 11 Dec 2020 17:49:19 +0000",
          "dc_creator": "Glenn Greenwald",
          "guid": "https://greenwald.substack.com/p/with-news-of-hunter-bidens-criminal-5e6",
          "description": "Clockwise: Politico, Oct. 19; CNN, Oct. 25; NPR, Oct. 22; The Boston Globe, Oct. 20 [...]",
          "content_encoded": "[HTML content]"
        },
        [...]
      ]
    }
  }
}