Skip to main content

Set up

Feed me up, Scotty! is configured by creating a TOML file called feeds.toml. Example:

[default]
timeout = 30

[funfacts]
title = "Wikipedia — did you know?"
url = "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page"
entrySelector = "#mp-dyk > ul li"
titleSelector = "b"
linkSelector = "b a"

[wikivoyage]
title = "Wikivoyage recommendations"
url = "https://en.wikivoyage.org/wiki/Main_Page"
entrySelector = ".jcarousel-wrapper .jcarousel-item"
titleSelector = "h2"
linkSelector = "h2 a"

Run npx feed-me-up-scotty (requires Node.js to be installed) to generate the configured feeds in a new folder called public/.

Fields

Table headers serve as the feed identifier; they will be used to determine the feed file names. For example, the configuration above would generate the feeds funfacts.xml and wikivoyage.xml.

Additionally, a single feed combining all the posts from the other feeds will be generated in all.xml.

Adding the below options to a table labelled default sets the given value for every feed configuration that does not specify a value for that option itself. For example, the configuration above would time out if the two source pages do not load within 30 seconds.

title​

Optional, string.

A title for your feed.

url​

Required, string.

URL of which to generate an RSS feed.

You can also pass an array of strings, e.g. to concatenate contents of multiple pages into a single RSS feed.

entrySelector​

Required, string.

CSS Selector matching the elements that contain individual feed entries. For example, "article".

titleSelector​

Required, string or array of strings.

CSS Selector matching the element inside individual feed entries containing that entry's title. For example, "h2" or ["h2", ".price"].

If provided with an array of CSS Selectors, the contents of the matching elements will be joined together by spaces ( ). (Since version 1.9.0.)

Set it to * if the full entry should be used as the title. (Since version 1.10.0.)

linkSelector​

Required, string.

CSS Selector matching the <a> element inside individual feed entries containing the link to view that entry in your browser. For example, "a.permalink".

Set it to * if the link is to be found on the element matched by entrySelector.

contentSelector​

Optional, string or array of strings.

CSS Selector matching the element inside individual feed entries containing that entry's content. For example, "p.lead", or [".image", ".caption"]. If not provided, the entry as a whole will be used as the content.

If provided with an array of CSS Selectors, the contents of the matching elements will be joined together by spaces ( ). (Since version 1.9.0.)

Available since version: 1.2.0.

dateSelector​

Optional, string.

CSS Selector matching the element inside individual feed entries containing that entry's publication date. For example, "time". If not provided, the date the feed was generated will be used as the publication time.

Available since version: 1.5.0.

dateFormat​

Optional, string.

Used in combination with dateSelector. Format string as understood by date-fns that describes the format of the date in the element matched by dateSelector.

Available since version: 1.5.0.

timeout​

Optional, integer.

Number of seconds to wait for the given page to load. Defaults to 60.

filters​

Optional, array of strings.

If set, entries containing one or more of the given strings will not be included. For example, ["Next page"].

matchOneOf​

Optional, array of strings.

If set, only entries containing one or more of the given strings will be included. For example, ["New", "Available"].

Available since version: 1.6.0..

matchAllOf​

Optional, array of strings.

If set, only entries containing all of the given strings will be included. For example, ["Verified", "HD"].

Available since version: 1.6.0..

Experimental fields

The following fields are experimental and may be removed or changed in a future version. They can help dealing with unstable feed sources.

onFail​

Optional, one of "error" (default), "stale", or "exclude".

What to do when fetching a feed source failed. Possible values:

  • "error": default, throw an error and abort the feed generation.
  • "stale": don't update this feed, but preserve a previously-fetched feed if available.
  • "skip": don't update this feed, and don't preserve previously fetched feeds.

waitUntil​

Optional, one of "domcontentloaded" (default), "load", or "networkidle"

When to consider the page loaded. This is useful for sites that first return an empty page, and then execute some JavaScript after the fact to add the content you want to see in your feed.

See https://playwright.dev/docs/api/class-page#page-goto-option-wait-until for documentation on the different options.

waitForSelector​

Optional, string.

Can be used to provide a selector that indicates when the page is fully loaded. If set, Feed me up, Scotty! will start looking for the feed content only when a matching element is added to the page.

Debugging

If your configuration is not producing the entries you expect, you can configure Feed me up, Scotty! to log more information to help you debugging it. To do so, set the environment variable $DEBUG to "info", "warning" or "error" (default), where "info" logs most information, and "error" only logs critical errors.

You can set an environment variable when running the command, e.g.:

DEBUG="info" npx feed-me-up-scotty

Additionally, if you want a dump of what the fetched HTML looks like, you can use :root as the entrySelector.