Check legal considerations by reviewing robots.txt and Terms of Service, avoid server overload, and use data responsibly. 2. Use tools like Python’s requests, BeautifulSoup, and feedgen to fetch, parse, and generate RSS feeds. 3. Scrape article data by identifying HTML elements with DevTools and extracting titles and links. 4. Generate a valid RSS feed in XML format using feedgen and save it to a file. 5. Automate the script with cron or cloud services and host the feed.xml publicly via GitHub Pages or a web server. 6. For JavaScript-heavy sites, use Playwright or Selenium to render content before parsing. 7. Maintain the feed by adding publication dates, attributing sources, and monitoring for site structure changes. The process involves fetching, extracting, and formatting data responsibly to create a functional RSS feed from non-RSS websites, ensuring compliance and sustainability, and ends with a working, updatable RSS feed accessible to any reader.

Scraping website data and turning it into an RSS feed is a powerful way to track updates from sites that don’t offer built-in feeds. While it requires some technical know-how, the process isn’t overly complex once you understand the steps. Here’s how to do it effectively and responsibly.

1. Understand the Basics and Legal Considerations

Before scraping any site:

• Check the robots.txt file (e.g., https://example.com/robots.txt) to see if scraping is allowed.
• Review the site’s Terms of Service — some explicitly prohibit scraping.
• Don’t overload servers — add delays between requests.
• Use scraping for personal or fair-use purposes, not for redistributing content you don’t own.

RSS (Really Simple Syndication) is a standardized XML format used to publish frequently updated content. You’ll be converting scraped data into this format.

2. Choose the Right Tools

You’ll need tools to:

• Fetch web pages
• Extract data
• Generate an RSS feed

Popular options:

• Python with libraries like:
  • requests or httpx – to download pages
  • BeautifulSoup or lxml – to parse HTML
  • feedgen or manual XML writing – to create RSS
• Alternative tools: Node.js (puppeteer, cheerio), or no-code tools like ParseHub or Apify, though they’re less flexible.

For this guide, we’ll use Python.

3. Scrape the Website Data

Let’s say you want to create an RSS feed for a blog that lists articles on its homepage.

Example: Scrape article titles and links

import requests
from bs4 import BeautifulSoup
from urllib.parse import urljoin

url = "https://example-blog.com"
headers = {
    "User-Agent": "RSS Bot - Contact me@youremail.com"
}

response = requests.get(url, headers=headers)
soup = BeautifulSoup(response.text, 'html.parser')

# Find article links (adjust selector based on site)
articles = []
for item in soup.select('h2 a[href]'):  # common pattern
    title = item.get_text(strip=True)
    link = urljoin(url, item['href'])
    articles.append({'title': title, 'link': link})

? Tip: Use browser DevTools (F12) to inspect the HTML and find reliable selectors.

4. Generate an RSS Feed

Install feedgen:

pip install feedgen

Now generate the feed:

from feedgen.feed import FeedGenerator

fg = FeedGenerator()
fg.title('Scraped Blog Feed')
fg.link()
fg.description('RSS feed generated from scraped data')

for article in articles:
    fe = fg.add_entry()
    fe.title(article['title'])
    fe.link(href=article['link'])

# Output RSS as string
rss_feed = fg.rss_str(pretty=True)

# Save to file
with open('feed.xml', 'w') as f:
    f.write(rss_feed.decode('utf-8'))

Now you have a valid feed.xml file that any RSS reader can subscribe to.

5. Automate and Host the Feed

To keep the feed updated:

• Run the script periodically using cron (Linux/Mac) or Task Scheduler (Windows).
• Or use a cloud function (e.g., GitHub Actions, Google Cloud Functions, Railway, or PythonAnywhere) to run it daily.

Host the feed.xml file where it’s publicly accessible:

• GitHub Pages
• A simple web server
• Dropbox/Public folder link (if supported)

Then share the URL like: https://yourdomain.com/feed.xml

Bonus: Handle Dynamic Content

If the site uses JavaScript to load content (e.g., React, infinite scroll), requests won’t work. Use:

• selenium
• playwright
• puppeteer (Node.js)

Example with Playwright (Python):

pip install playwright
playwright install

from playwright.sync_api import sync_playwright

with sync_playwright() as p:
    browser = p.chromium.launch()
    page = browser.new_page()
    page.goto("https://example-blog.com")
    content = page.content()
    browser.close()

# Then parse with BeautifulSoup as before
soup = BeautifulSoup(content, 'html.parser')

Final Notes

• Always attribute content and link back to the original.
• Add pubDate to RSS entries if you can extract publish dates.
• Monitor changes in site structure — your scraper may break if the HTML changes.

Basically, it’s a three-step process: fetch → extract → format. Once set up, you can track almost any site via RSS, even if it doesn’t provide one.

Not magic — just code and care.

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