blogwatcher

name	blogwatcher
description	Monitor RSS and Atom feeds for new posts from blogs, news sites, and podcasts using Python feedparser
category	research
version	1.0.0
origin	aiden
license	Apache-2.0
tags	rss, atom, feed, blog, news, monitor, feedparser, podcast, updates, aggregation

Blog and Feed Watcher

Monitor RSS and Atom feeds from blogs, news sites, and podcasts to track new posts. Uses the feedparser Python library — no API keys required for most feeds.

When to Use

• User wants to check for new posts from specific blogs or news sites
• User wants to aggregate headlines from multiple sources
• User wants to monitor a research blog or tech feed for updates
• User wants to read the latest posts from a site that has an RSS feed
• User wants to set up periodic feed monitoring

How to Use

1. Install feedparser

pip install feedparser

2. Read a single RSS/Atom feed

import feedparser
from datetime import datetime

feed = feedparser.parse("https://news.ycombinator.com/rss")
print(f"Feed: {feed.feed.title}")
print(f"Posts: {len(feed.entries)}\n")

for entry in feed.entries[:5]:
  title   = entry.get("title", "No title")
  link    = entry.get("link", "")
  date    = entry.get("published", "Unknown date")
  print(f"• {title}\n  {link}\n  {date}\n")

3. Monitor multiple feeds

import feedparser, time

FEEDS = [
  "https://feeds.feedburner.com/oreilly/radar",
  "https://blog.openai.com/rss/",
  "https://news.ycombinator.com/rss",
  "https://simonwillison.net/atom/everything/",
]

def fetch_all(feeds, max_per_feed=5):
  results = []
  for url in feeds:
    feed = feedparser.parse(url)
    for entry in feed.entries[:max_per_feed]:
      results.append({
        "source":    feed.feed.get("title", url),
        "title":     entry.get("title", ""),
        "link":      entry.get("link", ""),
        "published": entry.get("published", ""),
      })
  return sorted(results, key=lambda x: x["published"], reverse=True)

for item in fetch_all(FEEDS):
  print(f"[{item['source']}] {item['title']}\n  {item['link']}")

4. Filter posts by keyword

import feedparser

def search_feed(url, keyword):
  feed    = feedparser.parse(url)
  keyword = keyword.lower()
  matches = [
    e for e in feed.entries
    if keyword in e.get("title","").lower() or keyword in e.get("summary","").lower()
  ]
  for e in matches:
    print(f"• {e.title}\n  {e.link}\n")

search_feed("https://news.ycombinator.com/rss", "llm")

5. Find the RSS feed URL for a site

Common RSS URL patterns:

https://site.com/feed
https://site.com/rss
https://site.com/feed.xml
https://site.com/atom.xml
https://site.com/blog/feed

import feedparser, requests
from bs4 import BeautifulSoup   # pip install beautifulsoup4

def find_feed(site_url):
  resp = requests.get(site_url, timeout=10, headers={"User-Agent": "Mozilla/5.0"})
  soup = BeautifulSoup(resp.text, "html.parser")
  for tag in soup.find_all("link", type=lambda t: t and "rss" in t or "atom" in t):
    print(tag.get("href"))

find_feed("https://simonwillison.net")

6. Save latest posts to a file

import feedparser, json

feed  = feedparser.parse("https://news.ycombinator.com/rss")
posts = [{"title": e.title, "link": e.link, "date": e.get("published","")} for e in feed.entries[:20]]
with open("hn_feed.json", "w") as f:
  json.dump(posts, f, indent=2)
print(f"Saved {len(posts)} posts to hn_feed.json")

Examples

"What are the latest posts from Hacker News?" → Use step 2 with https://news.ycombinator.com/rss.

"Monitor these 4 AI blogs and show me posts about agents from the last week" → Use step 3 to fetch all, then step 4 logic to filter for agent keyword.

"Does this blog have an RSS feed? If so, get the latest 5 posts" → Use step 5 to discover the feed URL, then step 2 to fetch posts.

Cautions

• Some sites block RSS scrapers — use a browser-like User-Agent header if getting 403 errors
• feedparser handles both RSS 2.0, RSS 1.0, and Atom — no need to distinguish them
• entry.published format varies by feed — some use RFC 2822, others ISO 8601; don't assume a format
• Very active feeds (e.g. Reddit) may return 100+ entries — always use slicing ([:n]) to limit output