Recommended library for parsing RSS and Atom feeds

Ruby
1

Hi,
I am looking to sort through the various options for processing
RSS/Atom
feeds in Ruby.
I did some basic research, and FeedTools looks like the incumbent
option,
though many (old)
blog posts warned that it is only minimally maintained (if at all).
FeedZirra looks very popular,
has been recommended here, and activity is pretty high.

Does anyone have a complete list of all the library options? ( a link to
a
roundup article/blog post
would be great)
Does anyone have a particular favourite? Why you prefer it over other
options?

Posting links to reasonably up to date articles would be best. Google
searches are turning up
older articles predominantly, and thats not a good sign IMO.

High on my list of features is:

  • Heroku compatibility.
  • Easy to use in a way that respects the feeds source
  • Allows me to treat RSS/Atom the same

regards,
Richard

2

On Jun 22, 8:09 pm, Richard C. [email protected] wrote:

roundup article/blog post

  • Easy to use in a way that respects the feeds source
  • Allows me to treat RSS/Atom the same

Nokogiri, LibXML-Ruby, REXML

I’ve been down the road of creating a parser for these and, in my
experience, it turns out to be a YAGNI, because an XML parser works
well enough.

3

On Wed, Jun 23, 2010 at 11:16 AM, Intransition [email protected]
wrote:

Does anyone have a particular favourite? Why you prefer it over other
options?

Nokogiri, LibXML-Ruby, REXML

I’ve been down the road of creating a parser for these and, in my
experience, it turns out to be a YAGNI, because an XML parser works
well enough.

A bit low level aren’t they? Don’t really want to get my hands too dirty
with Schema formats etc. Want something that is simple enough to
use and has respectable performance (which won’t be the case with
anything I hand-write).
Thanks for the feedback.
Richard

4

On 6/22/2010 6:09 PM, Richard C. wrote:

roundup article/blog post

  • Easy to use in a way that respects the feeds source
  • Allows me to treat RSS/Atom the same

regards,
Richard

The RSS reader in the Ruby Standard Libs supports Atom as well:
http://www.ruby-doc.org/stdlib/libdoc/rss/rdoc/index.html

It is essentially undocumented, but there are some examples at:
http://www.cozmixng.org/~rwiki/?cmd=view;name=RSS+Parser%3A%3ATutorial.en

5

On Wed, Jun 23, 2010 at 07:43:02PM +0900, Richard C. wrote:

roundup article/blog post

A bit low level aren’t they? Don’t really want to get my hands too dirty
with Schema formats etc. Want something that is simple enough to
use and has respectable performance (which won’t be the case with
anything I hand-write).

There are several listed at ruby-toolbox.com:

http://www.ruby-toolbox.com/categories/rss_feed_parsing.html

I’ve heard good tings about feedzirra (the top listed there) although
I have not used it personally. There was a bit of buzz about it last
year.

enjoy,

-jeremy