RSS Feed Block

Renders entries from an external RSS feed. Its items are fetched at render time (by a fetcher you provide) and shown with a configurable item type (variation).

Live example

6.0.9

The Plone Content Management System

6.0.8

The Plone Content Management System

5.2.14

The Plone Content Management System

6.0.7

The Plone Content Management System

5.2.13

The Plone Content Management System

6.0.6

The Plone Content Management System

Developer Reference

Schema

Pass this object inside the blocks option when calling initBridge() to register this block type with the admin UI. See Custom Blocks for the full setup guide.

{
  "rssFeed": {
    "id": "rssFeed",
    "title": "RSS Feed",
    "blockSchema": {
      "fieldsets": [
        {
          "id": "default",
          "title": "Default",
          "fields": [
            "feedUrl",
            "count",
            "variation",
            "fieldMapping"
          ]
        }
      ],
      "properties": {
        "feedUrl": {
          "title": "Feed URL",
          "widget": "url"
        },
        "count": {
          "title": "Max items",
          "type": "number",
          "default": 6
        },
        "variation": {
          "title": "Item Type",
          "widget": "blockTypeSelect",
          "filterConvertibleFrom": "@default",
          "default": "summary"
        }
      }
    },
    "schemaEnhancer": {
      "inheritSchemaFrom": {
        "typeField": "variation",
        "mappingField": "fieldMapping",
        "defaultsField": "itemDefaults"
      }
    }
  }
}

JSON Block Data

Example JSON as stored in the Plone content API. This is the data structure your component will receive in the block prop.

{
  "@type": "rssFeed",
  "feedUrl": "https://pypi.org/rss/project/plone/releases.xml",
  "count": 6,
  "variation": "summary"
}

Rendering

How this block renders in your frontend. Add its handling to your renderer, or — for list-style blocks — register a fetcher and reuse your list rendering.

This block has no bespoke renderer. Add its fetcher to your fetchItems map (keyed by @type) and expandListingBlocks expands it in any region you render — the same seam that powers listings and other collection blocks. See Custom Blocks to define the block type. Only the fetcher below is block-specific.

// packages/helpers — client-side, best-effort (CORS-permitting feeds).
export function rssFetcher() {
  return async function fetchItems(block, { start, size }) {
    let entries = [];
    try {
      const res = await fetch(block.feedUrl);
      entries = parseRssEntries(await res.text()); // → [{ '@id': link, title, description, pubDate }]
    } catch {
      return { items: [], total: 0 };              // CORS / parse failure → empty feed, never throws
    }
    if (block.count != null) entries = entries.slice(0, block.count);
    return { items: entries.slice(start, start + size), total: entries.length };
  };
}

// Dependency-free parse so it runs in the browser AND node (no DOMParser):
function parseRssEntries(xml) {
  const out = [];
  const tag = (b, n) => (new RegExp(`<${n}\\b[^>]*>([\\s\\S]*?)<\\/${n}>`, 'i').exec(b) || [])[1];
  for (const m of xml.matchAll(/<item\b[^>]*>([\s\S]*?)<\/item>/gi)) {
    const b = m[1];
    out.push({ '@id': tag(b, 'link') || '', title: tag(b, 'title') || '', description: tag(b, 'description') || '', pubDate: tag(b, 'pubDate') });
  }
  return out;
}
// One fetchItems map, keyed by @type, holds every fetch-based block you use.
const fetchItems = {
  listing: ploneFetchItems({ apiUrl, contextPath }),
  rssFeed: rssFetcher(), // ← this block — just another entry
};

// Call this on each region you render (the list of block ids in that region).
const { items } = await expandListingBlocks(regionBlockIds, {
  blocks, fetchItems, itemTypeField: 'variation',
});
items.forEach((item) => renderBlock(item)); // your normal per-block renderer