RSS Connector

Version 22.0.8473


RSS Connector


RSS Connectors support downloading remote RSS and Atom feeds.

Overview

RSS connectors expose a simple interface to automatically poll for downloadable content from a specific RSS or Atom feed. The connector can be configured to only process new and updated content, and can perform both HTTP and SSL authentication to the remote service.

Connector Settings

Settings Tab

Configuration

Settings related to the core configuration of the connector.

  • Connector Id The static name of the connector. All connector-specific files are held in a folder by the same name within the Data Directory.
  • Connector Description An optional field to provide free-form description of the connector and its role in the flow.
  • Feed URL The HTTP or HTTPS endpoint where RSS content should be downloaded from.
  • Feed Type Whether the remote URL is an RSS or Atom feed.
  • Use If-Modified-Since When enabled, the connector will include an “If-Modified-Since” header in the outgoing request that is equal to the latest publication date-time from the previous download attempt. This causes the server to filter responses according to what content is new or has been modified recently.
  • Process Only New Items When enabled, the connector will store the last modified date from previous downloads, and will filter out results that are not new or modified since that date. The result is the same as Use If-Modified-Since, but the filtering is done on the client-side rather than sending a filter condition to the server.

Authentication

Settings related to authenticating with the RSS service.

  • Authorization Type The type of authentication to use with the RSS service. Please see the Authentication section for more details.

SSL Server Authentication

Settings related to verifying the SSL server’s identity.

  • SSL Server Certificate The public key certificate used to verify the identity of an SSL/TLS server. This setting can be left blank, to allow the underlying OS/JVM to perform certificate validation, or it can be set to ‘Any Certificate’ to unconditionally trust the target server’s identity.

Automation Tab

Automation Settings

Settings related to the automatic processing of files by the connector.

  • Receive Whether the connector should automatically send RSS download requests according to a specified interval.
  • Receive Interval The interval between automatic requests.
  • Minutes The number of minutes to wait before sending a request. Only applicable when Receive Interval is set to Minute.
  • Minutes Past the Hour The minutes offset for an hourly schedule. Only applicable when Receive Interval is set to Hourly. For example, if this value is set to 5, the automation service will send requests at 1:05, 2:05, 3:05, etc.
  • Time The time within a given day that the request should be sent. Only applicable when Receive Interval is set to Daily, or Weekly, or Monthly.
  • Day The day on which the request should be sent. Only applicable when Receive Interval is set to Weekly or Monthly.
  • Cron Expression An arbitrary string representing a cron expression that determines when the request should be sent. Only applicable when Receive Interval is set to Advanced.

Advanced Tab

Proxy Settings

A collection of settings that identify and authenticate to the proxy through which the HTTP connection should be routed.

Other Settings

Settings not included in the previous categories.

  • Include Channel Data Whether to include data about the RSS channel in the output.
  • Log Level The level of detail included in logs generated for the connector.
  • SSL Enabled Protocols The list of SSL/TLS protocols supported when establishing outgoing connections. It is strongly recommended to only use TLS protocols. Some obsolete operating systems do not support TLS 1.2.
  • Skip Processed Items When enabled, the connector maintains a checksum of each item downloaded, and will not download the same content more than once.
  • Timeout The duration in seconds to wait for a response from the RSS server before throwing a Timeout error.
  • Use ETag Server’s may include a checksum of the RSS content as the ETag (entity tag); if this setting is enabled, the connector will include the ETag from the previous response as the “If-None-Match” header in the outgoing request.

Miscellaneous

Settings for specific use cases.

  • Other Settings Allows configuration of hidden connector settings in a semicolon-separated list, like setting1=value1;setting2=value2. Normal connector use cases and functionality should not require use of these settings.

Establishing a Connection

A valid target Feed URL is required to establish a connection to any RSS service. Some services may also require authentication or a set of custom headers in order to consume the service.

The connector silently supports both ‘http’ and ‘https’ target URLs. If the target URL begins with ‘https,’ the connector will automatically negotiate a secure SSL connection. In this case, the SSL Server Certificate should be set to the public key certificate identifying the server, and this field can be left blank, to allow the underlying OS/JVM to perform certificate validation, or it can be set to ‘Any Certificate’ to implicitly trust the target endpoint.

Authentication

The RSS connector supports HTTP authentication in the following formats:

  • Basic (plaintext)
  • Digest (encrypted)
  • NTLM
  • Negotiate
  • Proprietary

The connector provides the credentials specified in Username and Password with each request to the remote RSS service.