---
name: "sfeed"
section: "1"
platform: "linux"
package: "sfeed"
version: "2.2-1"
release: "Debian 13 (Trixie)"
platforms: ["linux"]
url: "https://new.carta.tech/sfeed"
---

# sfeed(1)

RSS and Atom parser

## NAME

**sfeed** – RSS and Atom parser

## SYNOPSIS

**sfeed** \[*baseurl*\]

## DESCRIPTION

**sfeed** reads RSS or Atom feed data (XML) from stdin. It writes the feed data in a TAB-separated format to stdout. If the *baseurl* argument is a valid absolute URL then the relative links or enclosures will be made an absolute URL.

## TAB-SEPARATED FORMAT FIELDS

The items are output per line in a TAB-separated format.

For the fields title, id and author each whitespace character is replaced by a SPACE character. Control characters are removed.

The content field can contain newlines and these are escaped. TABs, newlines and '\\' are escaped with '\\', so it becomes: '\\t', '\\n' and '\\\\'. Other whitespace characters except spaces are removed. Control characters are removed.

The order and content of the fields are:

- 1\. timestamp

  UNIX timestamp in UTC+0, empty if missing or on a parse failure.

- 2\. title

  Title text, HTML code in titles is ignored and is treated as plain-text.

- 3\. link

  Link

- 4\. content

  Content, can have plain-text or HTML code depending on the content-type field.

- 5\. content-type

  "html" or "plain" if it has content.

- 6\. id

  RSS item GUID or Atom id.

- 7\. author

  Item, first author.

- 8\. enclosure

  Item, first enclosure.

- 9\. category

  Item, categories, multiple values are separated by the '\|' character.

## EXIT STATUS

The **sfeed** utility exits 0 on success, and \>0 if an error occurs.

## EXAMPLES

```
curl -s 'https://codemadness.org/atom.xml' | sfeed
```

To convert the character set from a feed that is not UTF-8 encoded the [iconv(1)](/iconv/1.md) tool can be used:

```
curl -s 'https://codemadness.org/some_iso-8859-1_feed.xml' | \
iconv -f iso-8859-1 -t utf-8 | \
sfeed
```

## EXAMPLE SETUP

1\. Create a directory for the sfeedrc configuration and the feeds:

```
mkdir -p ~/.sfeed/feeds
```

2\. Copy the example [sfeedrc(5)](/sfeedrc/5.md) configuration:

```
cp sfeedrc.example ~/.sfeed/sfeedrc
$EDITOR ~/.sfeed/sfeedrc
```

Or import existing OPML subscriptions using [sfeed\_opml\_import(1)](/sfeed_opml_import/1.md):

```
sfeed_opml_import < file.opml > ~/.sfeed/sfeedrc
```

3\. To update feeds and merge the new items with existing items:

```
sfeed_update
```

4\. Format feeds to a plain-text list:

```
sfeed_plain ~/.sfeed/feeds/*
```

Or format feeds to a curses interface:

```
sfeed_curses ~/.sfeed/feeds/*
```

There are also other formatting programs included. The README file has more examples.

## SEE ALSO

[sfeed\_curses(1)](/sfeed_curses/1.md), [sfeed\_opml\_import(1)](/sfeed_opml_import/1.md), [sfeed\_plain(1)](/sfeed_plain/1.md), [sfeed\_update(1)](/sfeed_update/1.md), [sfeed(5)](/sfeed/5.md), [sfeedrc(5)](/sfeedrc/5.md)

## AUTHORS

Hiltjo Posthuma ⟨*hiltjo@codemadness.org*⟩

## CAVEATS

If a timezone for the timestamp field is not in the RFC 822 or RFC 3339 format it is not supported and the timezone is interpreted as UTC+0.