Extract Dates from RSS Feeds

The RSS Connector can use the dates contained in RSS feeds and feed items to determine whether there is new information in the feed that needs to be ingested, and whether information in the feed has changed. For example, if the last modified date for an RSS feed has not changed, the connector does not need to process the feed. If a feed item has been modified, the connector can extract this information and send the update to the ingestion server.

The names of the XML fields that contain dates, and the format of the dates, can vary between RSS feeds. To ensure the connector can extract dates successfully, set the configuration parameters RssItemDateTag and RssFeedDateTag.

The RssFeedDateTag parameter specifies the name of the XML element that contains the last modified date for the RSS feed.

Items in an RSS feed often contain a date to indicate when the item was published. For example:

<item>
  <guid>...</guid>
  <title>Micro Focus releases new connector</title>
  <description>Micro Focus today released the new RSS connector...</description>
  <pubDate>2015-11-01T00:00:00.000-07:00</pubDate>
  <link>http://www.example.com</link>
</item>

To extract the date associated with each item, set the parameter RssItemDateTag to the name of the XML element that contains the date:

RssItemDateTag=pubDate

The configuration parameter RssDateFormats instructs the connector how to parse dates. The default value of this parameter includes many standard date formats, but if the dates in your RSS feed are not recognized, you might also need to set this parameter. The following example shows a suitable format for the example feed item above:

RssDateFormats=YYYY-M+-D+THH:NN:SS.F+ZZZZZ

For more information about these parameters, refer to the RSS Connector Reference.


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