There are a lot of 'rss' related NPM packages but I think I've found a combination that is great for parsing RSS feeds. Something that takes up the minimal node_modules and works great. I think the killer combination is

The code impressively simple:

const got = require("got"); const parser = require("fast-xml-parser"); (async function main() { const buffer = await got("https://hacks.mozilla.org/feed/", { responseType: "buffer", resolveBodyOnly: true, timeout: 5000, retry: 5, }); var feed = parser.parse(buffer.toString()); for (const item of feed.rss.channel.item) { console.log({ title: item.title, url: item.link }); break; } })(); // Outputs... // { // title: 'MDN localization update, February 2021', // url: 'https://hacks.mozilla.org/2021/02/mdn-localization-update-february-2021/' // } 

I like about fast-xml-parser is that it has no dependencies. And it's tiny:

▶ du -sh node_modules/fast-xml-parser 104K node_modules/fast-xml-parser

The got package is quite a bit larger and has more dependencies. But I still love it. It's proven itself to be very reliable and very pleasant API. Both packages support TypeScript too.

A particular detail I like about fast-xml-parser is that it doesn't try to do the downloading part too. This way, I can use my own preferred library and I could potentially write my own caching code if I want to protect against flaky network.