Parse RSS with jQuery

Question

I want to use jQuery to parse RSS feeds. Can this be done with the base jQuery library out of the box or will I need to use a plugin?

Answer 1

For those of us coming to the discussion late, starting with 1.5 jQuery has built-in xml parsing capabilities, which makes it pretty easy to do this without plugins or 3rd party services. It has a parseXml function, and will also auto-parse xml when using the $.get function. E.g.:

$.get(rssurl, function(data) {
    var $xml = $(data);
    $xml.find("item").each(function() {
        var $this = $(this),
            item = {
                title: $this.find("title").text(),
                link: $this.find("link").text(),
                description: $this.find("description").text(),
                pubDate: $this.find("pubDate").text(),
                author: $this.find("author").text()
        }
        //Do something with item here...
    });
});

Answer 2

You can also use jquery-rss, which comes with nice templating and is super easy to use:

$("#your-div").rss("http://www.recruiter.com/feed/career.xml", {
    limit: 3,
    layoutTemplate: '<ul class="inline">{entries}</ul>',
    entryTemplate: '<li><a href="{url}">[{author}@{date}] {title}</a><br/>{shortBodyPlain}</li>'
})

yields (as of Sept 18, 2013):

<div id="your-div">
    <ul class="inline">
    <entries></entries>
    </ul>
    <ul class="inline">
        <li><a href="http://www.recruiter.com/i/when-to-go-over-a-recruiter%e2%80%99s-head/">[@Tue, 10 Sep 2013 22:23:51 -0700] When to Go Over a Recruiter's Head</a><br>Job seekers tend to have a certain "fear" of recruiters and hiring managers, and I mean fear in the reverence and respect ...</li>
        <li><a href="http://www.recruiter.com/i/the-perfect-job/">[@Tue, 10 Sep 2013 14:52:40 -0700] The Perfect Job</a><br>Having long ago dealt with the "perfect resume" namely God's, in a previous article of mine, it makes sense to consider the ...</li>
        <li><a href="http://www.recruiter.com/i/unemployment-benefits-applications-remain-near-5-year-low-decline-again/">[@Mon, 09 Sep 2013 12:49:17 -0700] Unemployment Benefits Applications Remain Near 5-Year Low, Decline Again</a><br>As reported by the U.S. Department of Labor, the number of workers seeking unemployment benefits continued to sit near ...</li>
    </ul>
</div>

See http://jsfiddle.net/jhfrench/AFHfn/ for a working example.