rss-monitor

RSS Monitor

Monitor RSS and Atom feeds for new content. Uses curl + XML parsing (no extra install).

Prerequisites

No extra install required — uses built-in tools:

# Required (macOS built-in):
curl --version    # HTTP fetching
python3 --version # XML parsing

# Optional for better output:
brew install jq   # JSON formatting

Feed list is stored at: ~/.config/rss-monitor/feeds.txt (one URL per line).

Commands

Fetch and Parse a Feed

# Fetch RSS/Atom feed and list titles + links
curl -s "https://example.com/feed.xml" | python3 -c "
import sys, xml.etree.ElementTree as ET
tree = ET.parse(sys.stdin)
root = tree.getroot()
ns = {'atom': 'http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom'}
# Try RSS first, then Atom
items = root.findall('.//item') or root.findall('.//atom:entry', ns)
for item in items[:10]:
    title = item.findtext('title') or item.findtext('atom:title', namespaces=ns) or 'No title'
    link = item.findtext('link') or item.findtext('atom:link', namespaces=ns) or ''
    pubdate = item.findtext('pubDate') or item.findtext('atom:updated', namespaces=ns) or ''
    print(f'- {title.strip()}\n  {pubdate.strip()}\n  {link.strip()}')
"

Add a Feed to Monitor

# Create config dir if needed
mkdir -p ~/.config/rss-monitor

# Add feed URL
echo "https://example.com/feed.xml" >> ~/.config/rss-monitor/feeds.txt
echo "Feed added."

# List saved feeds
cat ~/.config/rss-monitor/feeds.txt

Check All Saved Feeds

# Check all feeds in list
while IFS= read -r url; do
  echo "\n=== $url ==="
  curl -s "$url" | python3 -c "
import sys, xml.etree.ElementTree as ET
try:
    tree = ET.parse(sys.stdin)
    root = tree.getroot()
    ns = {'atom': 'http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom'}
    items = root.findall('.//item') or root.findall('.//atom:entry', ns)
    for item in items[:5]:
        title = item.findtext('title') or item.findtext('atom:title', namespaces=ns) or 'No title'
        print(f'  - {title.strip()}')
except: print('  [Parse error]')
"
done < ~/.config/rss-monitor/feeds.txt

Search Feed by Keyword

curl -s "https://example.com/feed.xml" | python3 -c "
import sys, xml.etree.ElementTree as ET
keyword = 'KEYWORD'.lower()
tree = ET.parse(sys.stdin)
root = tree.getroot()
ns = {'atom': 'http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom'}
items = root.findall('.//item') or root.findall('.//atom:entry', ns)
for item in items:
    title = item.findtext('title') or item.findtext('atom:title', namespaces=ns) or ''
    if keyword in title.lower():
        link = item.findtext('link') or ''
        print(f'- {title.strip()}\n  {link.strip()}')
"

Remove a Feed

# Remove a URL from the feed list
grep -v "url_to_remove" ~/.config/rss-monitor/feeds.txt > /tmp/feeds_tmp.txt
mv /tmp/feeds_tmp.txt ~/.config/rss-monitor/feeds.txt
echo "Feed removed."

Usage Examples

"Check for new posts from Hacker News"

curl -s "https://news.ycombinator.com/rss" | python3 -c "
import sys, xml.etree.ElementTree as ET
tree = ET.parse(sys.stdin)
for item in tree.findall('.//item')[:10]:
    title = item.findtext('title') or ''
    link = item.findtext('link') or ''
    print(f'- {title.strip()}\n  {link.strip()}')
"

"Add this feed: https://blog.example.com/rss"

mkdir -p ~/.config/rss-monitor
echo "https://blog.example.com/rss" >> ~/.config/rss-monitor/feeds.txt
echo "Added. Currently monitoring $(wc -l < ~/.config/rss-monitor/feeds.txt) feeds."

"Check all my feeds"

# Run the check-all-saved-feeds command above

"Search for 'AI' in this feed"

# Replace KEYWORD with 'AI' in the search command above

Common Feed URLs

Source	RSS URL
Hacker News	https://news.ycombinator.com/rss
GitHub releases (repo)	https://github.com/USER/REPO/releases.atom
Reddit subreddit	https://www.reddit.com/r/SUBREDDIT/.rss
YouTube channel	https://www.youtube.com/feeds/videos.xml?channel_id=CHANNEL_ID

Rules

• curl and python3 are always available on macOS — no install check needed
• Feed list location: ~/.config/rss-monitor/feeds.txt
• Always create config directory before writing: mkdir -p ~/.config/rss-monitor
• Default to showing last 10 items per feed; 5 items when checking all feeds
• If XML parsing fails, report the URL and error, continue with other feeds
• Filter out duplicate entries if the same URL appears multiple times in feeds.txt
• For date filtering (since 24h/7d), parse pubDate fields and compare to current time
• Keep output concise: title + link only by default, add dates only if requested