Creating an RSS/XML feed

#1

How can I create an rss feed for my blog in Middleman?

#2

I think you can find useful code here.

http://recipes.sinatrarb.com/p/views/rss_feed_with_builder

Needs to be adapted to Middleman though.

#3

Interesting, thanks. Does placing this code in a HAML view make sense?

#4

You can do it with a .builder extension, or you can just write normal Haml.

Check out middleman-blog’s default feed.xml template: https://github.com/middleman/middleman-blog/blob/master/lib/middleman-blog/template/source/feed.xml.builder

#5

Nayefc, did you have any success with implementing this?

#6

Yep, worked beautifully.

#7

Would you mind sharing the code. That would save some work for me.

#8

Sure. I created a feed.xml.builder file in my /source:

1  xml.instruct!
2  xml.feed "xmlns" => "http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom" do
3    xml.title "Nayef Copty"
4    xml.subtitle "Blog & Portfolio"
5    xml.id "http://nayefcopty.com/blog"
6    xml.link "href" => "http://nayefcopty.com/blog"
7    xml.link "href" => "http://blog.url.com/feed.xml", "rel" => "self"
8    xml.updated blog.articles.first.date.to_time.iso8601
9    xml.author { xml.name "Nayef Copty" }
10 
11   blog.articles[0..10].each do |article|
12     xml.entry do
13       xml.title article.title
14       xml.link "rel" => "alternate", "href" => article.url
15       xml.id article.url
16       xml.published article.date.to_time.iso8601
17       xml.updated article.date.to_time.iso8601
18       xml.author { xml.name "Nayef Copty" }
19       xml.summary article.summary, "type" => "html"
20       xml.content article.body, "type" => "html"
21     end
22   end
23 end

Then in your config:

page "/feed.xml", :layout => false
1 Like
#9

Hey nayefc,
I took your example and put it in my feed.xml.builder and my config.rb. I changed everything so it fits for me except line 7. I don’t know what to put in there. Could you please help me out with this? And, I know this is a kind of weird question but I’m really knew to this all and so I have to ask. What to do next? There is no RSS feed button or link or something. Please can you help me with this?
Thanks a lot!!!

#10

Did you create a feed.xml.builder file? If so, and if you added the config line I have posted, all you need to do then is access the URL that you posted in line 7 above. Probably: www.yourwebsite.com/feed.xml

The code above just generates your XML feed page. You will then need to link to it (www.yourwebsite.com/feed.xml) in one of your views (HTML files).

My HAML to link to my RSS feed looks like this:

%a{:href => "/feed.xml", :target => "_blank"}
  %img.img-left{:alt => "rss", :src => "/img/rss.png"}/

You can find my rss.png image at www.nayefcopty.com.

Makes sense?

#11

Absolutely. Thanks a lot. I’ll try it as soon as I have the time to and tell how it worked. Thanks again!

#12

Works perfect. Now I just need to figure how to build this site so that it looks like the rest of my site :slight_smile:
I tried to build it just the normal way but then I got a lot of errors because of the stuff the layout.erb added to the site. But it will work for now.
Thanks again!

#13

What do you mean? It should be an XML page with no layout at all.

#14

Yepp, my wrong :smiley: Works absolutely as it should.

#15

I would like to add a small contribution because I had a problem compiling the rss feed: keep in mind that you need to have the builder gem installed.