How to use the RSS feed parser
- 1Under Source, keep Feed URL and enter the feed address (or the site's home page), then press Load feed. To work offline, choose Paste XML, paste the feed or press Open file, then press Parse feed.
- 2Check the summary: number of Items, the Format (RSS 2.0, RSS 1.0 or Atom 1.0) and the Newest item date.
- 3Use Sort (feed order, newest, oldest, title) and Show to browse the list.
- 4Press Copy JSON, or download the items as JSON or CSV.
Example
<rss version="2.0" xmlns:atom="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom" xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/"> <channel><title>Example Blog</title> <atom:link href="https://example.com/feed/" rel="self"/> <link>https://example.com/</link> <item><title>Compressing images for the web</title> <link>https://example.com/compress-images/</link> <pubDate>Mon, 05 Oct 2026 09:30:00 GMT</pubDate> <dc:creator>Ada Lovelace</dc:creator><category>Images</category> <description><![CDATA[<p>How to get a photo under <b>100 KB</b> without visible loss.</p>]]></description> </item></channel></rss>
{
"title": "Compressing images for the web",
"link": "https://example.com/compress-images/",
"date": "2026-10-05T09:30:00.000Z",
"author": "Ada Lovelace",
"categories": ["Images"],
"summary": "How to get a photo under 100 KB without visible loss."
}One item from the JSON export (shortened). The HTML in the description is reduced to plain text, and the RSS date is converted to ISO 8601.
Loading a feed by URL
When you press Load feed, our server requests the address, follows redirects and returns the raw XML to your browser, which parses it. Your browser never contacts the feed's site directly, and the line under the form shows the time of the check, the HTTP status, the content type and the final URL after redirects.
If you enter a web page instead of a feed, the parser looks for <link rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml"> tags in the page and offers a button for each feed it finds. WordPress sites usually have a feed at /feed/, Blogger at /feeds/posts/default, and many others at /rss.xml or /atom.xml.
RSS vs Atom
| RSS 2.0 | Atom 1.0 | |
|---|---|---|
| Root element | <rss><channel> | <feed> |
| Item | <item> | <entry> |
| Date | <pubDate> (RFC 822: Mon, 05 Oct 2026 09:30:00 GMT) | <published> / <updated> (ISO 8601) |
| Content | <description>, often HTML in CDATA | <summary> / <content type="html"> |
| Link | <link> text | <link href="…" rel="alternate"/> |
The parser reads both, plus the older RSS 1.0 (RDF) format, and the common extensions: dc:creator for authors, content:encoded for full text, enclosure for podcast audio, and media:content or media:thumbnail for images. Dates in either format are converted to ISO 8601 for sorting and export.
Exporting items
JSON contains the feed's title, link, description, language and generator, plus every item with title, link, date (ISO 8601), dateRaw (as written in the feed), author, categories, summary, guid, enclosure (URL, type, length) and image. Summaries are plain text, cut at 280 characters.
CSV has one row per item with the same fields, comma-separated with a UTF-8 byte order mark so Excel shows accented characters correctly. To reshape the JSON into other columns, run it through the JSON to CSV converter.
Common feed errors
- The XML isn't well-formed. Usually an unescaped
&in a title or URL: XML requires&. One bad character makes strict feed readers reject the whole feed, so fix it at the source. - This is an HTML page, not a feed. The URL returns a web page. Use the feed buttons offered, or look for an RSS icon on the site.
- The server answered 403 or 404. Some hosts block automated requests or have moved the feed. Paste the XML from your browser instead.
- Wrong characters (é). The feed declares one encoding but is saved in another. Our server reads feeds as UTF-8.
- Dates missing or unsorted. Some feeds omit
pubDateor use non-standard date text; the raw value is kept indateRaw.
What happens to the address I enter?
To check a URL, our server requests the address you enter and returns the result to you. We don't store the pages we fetch or keep a list of the addresses you check. Like any website, our hosting provider keeps short-lived technical request logs for security. See the privacy policy.