RSS

Astro supports fast, automatic RSS feed generation for blogs and other content websites. For more information about RSS feeds in general, see aboutfeeds.com.

The @astrojs/rss package provides helpers for generating RSS feeds using API endpoints. This unlocks both static builds and on-demand generation when using an SSR adapter.

First, install @astrojs/rss using your preferred package manager:

npm install @astrojs/rss

Then, ensure you’ve configured a site in your project’s astro.config. You will use this to generate links in your RSS feed via the SITE environment variable.

Now, let’s generate our first RSS feed! Create an rss.xml.js file under your src/pages/ directory. rss.xml will be the output URL, so feel free to rename this if you prefer.

Next, import the rss helper from the @astrojs/rss package and call with the following parameters:

src/pages/rss.xml.js
import rss from '@astrojs/rss';

export const get = () => rss({
  // `<title>` field in output xml
  title: 'Buzz’s Blog',
  // `<description>` field in output xml
  description: 'A humble Astronaut’s guide to the stars',
  // base URL for RSS <item> links
  // SITE will use "site" from your project's astro.config.
  site: import.meta.env.SITE,
  // list of `<item>`s in output xml
  // simple example: generate items for every md file in /src/pages
  // see "Generating items" section for required frontmatter and advanced use cases
  items: import.meta.glob('./**/*.md'),
  // (optional) inject custom xml
  customData: `<language>en-us</language>`,
});

The items field accepts either:

  1. An import.meta.glob(...) result (only use this for .md files within the src/pages/ directory!)
  2. A list of RSS feed objects, each with a link, title, pubDate, and optional description and customData fields.

We recommend this option as a convenient shorthand for .md files under src/pages/. Each post should have a title, pubDate, and optional description and customData fields in its frontmatter. If this isn’t possible, or you’d prefer to generate this frontmatter in code, see option 2.

Say your blog posts are stored under the src/pages/blog/ directory. You can generate an RSS feed like so:

src/pages/rss.xml.js
import rss from '@astrojs/rss';

export const get = () => rss({
  title: 'Buzz’s Blog',
  description: 'A humble Astronaut’s guide to the stars',
  site: import.meta.env.SITE,
  items: import.meta.glob('./blog/**/*.md'),
});

See Vite’s glob import documentation for more on this import syntax.

We recommend this option for .md files outside of the pages directory. This is common when generating routes via getStaticPaths.

For instance, say your .md posts are stored under a src/posts/ directory. Each post has a title, pubDate, and slug in its frontmatter, where slug corresponds to the output URL on your site. We can generate an RSS feed using Vite’s import.meta.glob helper like so:

src/pages/rss.xml.js
import rss from '@astrojs/rss';

const postImportResult = import.meta.glob('../posts/**/*.md', { eager: true });
const posts = Object.values(postImportResult);

export const get = () => rss({
  title: 'Buzz’s Blog',
  description: 'A humble Astronaut’s guide to the stars',
  site: import.meta.env.SITE,
  items: posts.map((post) => ({
    link: post.url,
    title: post.frontmatter.title,
    pubDate: post.frontmatter.pubDate,
  }))
});

You can style your RSS feed for a more pleasant user experience when viewing the file in your browser.

Use the rss function’s stylesheet option to specify an absolute path to your stylesheet.

rss({
  // ex. use your stylesheet from "public/rss/styles.xsl"
  stylesheet: '/rss/styles.xsl',
  // ...
});

If you don’t have an RSS stylesheet in mind, we recommend the Pretty Feed v3 default stylesheet, which you can download from GitHub and save into your project’s public/ directory.