node-comics-feed

RSS feeds of comics sites usually contains the links to a webpage but not the strip images.
This module iterates on the items on a feed and parse the webpages to create a new feed with embedded comic strips.

Supported websites:

• GoComics
• Dilbert.com
• Explosm.net

The list of parsers is meant to be extensible, see lib/parser.js.
PRs are welcome.

Inspired by gocomics-scrape and re-implemented using Node.

Usage

npm install comics-feed
comics-feed [.rss|url]

Turns this

into this

(rendered by Firefox)

Parsers

parsers/*.js will be installed in plugins in as of 0.0.9. A parser should have this interface.

/**
 * Parser = {
 *   name,
 *   match(),
 *   scrape()
 * }
 *
 * match():
 * @param {Object}   siteUrl  parsed url for the comic strips site
 * Returns whether this scraper can handle this site
 *
 * scrape():
 * @param {String}   baseUrl  url of the webpage containing the comic strip
 * @param {Object}   $        [cheerio](http://matthewmueller.github.io/cheerio/) object containing the parsed page
 * @param {Function} callback callback function to return the parsed strip image URL
 *
 * callback:
 * @param {Object}   error    error object if one occurs
 * @param {String}   img_url  the parsed strip image URL
 *
 */

Tested on

http://feed.dilbert.com/dilbert/daily_strip

http://feeds.feedburner.com/uclick/dilbert-classics

http://feeds.feedburner.com/Explosm (credits to eguendelman)

TODO

• error handling
  • invalid URL
  • malformed feed
  • scraping error
• adds pubDate for items
• re-entrance
• module globals cleanup

SAAS on Heroku

heroku-comics-feed uses this module to provide a subscribable RSS service.