🔓 n8n-nodes-google-news-decoder

A powerful n8n custom node that decodes Google News encoded URLs into clean, original article links with built-in caching and advanced configuration options.

📋 Table of Contents

• Overview
• Features
• Prerequisites
• Installation
• Configuration
• Usage
• Example Workflow
• Advanced Features
• Development
• Project Structure
• Testing
• Troubleshooting
• License

🎯 Overview

This package provides a custom n8n node that transforms complex Google News RSS encoded URLs into clean, decoded URLs with intelligent caching and customizable decoding parameters.

Before:

https://news.google.com/rss/articles/CBMihAFBVV95cUxNRnMtZDFfUTgx...

After:

https://original-news-site.com/article-title-here

✨ Features

• 🔗 URL Decoding - Converts Google News encoded RSS links to original URLs
• 💾 Smart Caching - Built-in LRU cache (max 1000 items) with configurable TTL
• 📊 Metadata Extraction - Retrieves signature, timestamp, and GUID
• 🎛️ Customizable - Configure RPC headers, locales, and endpoints
• 🚀 Simple Integration - Works seamlessly with n8n workflows
• 🎯 RSS Optimized - Perfect for Google News RSS → article extraction pipelines
• ⚡ Performance - Sequential processing with error handling and cache support

Output Data

Each decoded URL returns:

{
  "guid": "CBMihAFBVV95cUxNRnMtZDFfUTgx...",
  "encodedUrl": "https://news.google.com/rss/articles/...",
  "decodedUrl": "https://original-news-site.com/article",
  "timestamp": "1705334400",
  "signature": "CBMiXWh0dHBz...",
  "cached": false,
  "cacheAge": "0s" // Only present if cached=true
}

📦 Prerequisites

| Requirement | Version | | ----------- | --------------------- | | Node.js | 18.x or 20.x | | npm | 8.x or higher | | n8n | 1.12+ | | OS | Windows, Linux, macOS |

🚀 Installation

Step 1: Install n8n (if needed)

# Install n8n globally
npm install -g n8n

# Start n8n
n8n start

Step 2: Install the Custom Node

Navigate to your n8n configuration folder:

# Windows (typically)
cd C:\Users\<username>\.n8n

# macOS/Linux (typically)
cd ~/.n8n

Create the nodes directory (if not present) and initialize a new Node.js project:

mkdir -p nodes
cd nodes
npm init -y

Install the package:

Option A: From Local Path

npm install /path/to/n8n-nodes-google-news-decoder

Option B: From GitHub

npm install git+https://github.com/ziedkefidev-cell/n8n-nodes-google-news-decoder.git

Option C: From npm (if published)

npm install n8n-nodes-google-news-decoder

Step 3: Restart n8n

n8n start

🎉 The node will now appear in n8n under the name "Google News Decoder"

⚙️ Configuration

Basic Configuration

| Parameter | Type | Required | Description | | ----------- | ------ | -------- | --------------------------------- | | Encoded URL | String | Yes | Google News encoded URL to decode |

Advanced Options

🔧 HTML Extraction

| Parameter | Type | Default | Description | | ------------------- | ------ | ------------- | ---------------------------- | | Signature Attribute | String | data-n-a-sg | HTML attribute for signature | | Timestamp Attribute | String | data-n-a-ts | HTML attribute for timestamp |

🌍 Localization

| Parameter | Type | Default | Description | | --------- | ------ | ------- | --------------------------------------- | | Locale | String | US:en | Locale for decode request (e.g., FR:fr) |

🔌 API Configuration

| Parameter | Type | Default | Description | | --------------- | ------ | ---------------------------------------------------------- | ----------------------------------- | | Decode Endpoint | String | https://news.google.com/_/DotsSplashUi/data/batchexecute | Google's internal decoding endpoint | | RPC Header Base | JSON | ["X", "X", 1, [1, 1, 1], ...] | Custom RPC header structure |

💾 Caching

| Parameter | Type | Default | Description | | ------------------- | ------- | ------- | --------------------------------------- | | Enable Cache | Boolean | true | Enable/disable result caching | | Cache TTL (minutes) | Number | 5 | Cache time-to-live (shown when enabled) |

Cache Features:

• LRU eviction (max 1000 items)
• Per-URL caching
• Cached responses include cacheAge field
• Automatic TTL expiration

🌐 HTTP Headers

| Header Name | Default Value | Description | | ----------- | ----------------------------------------------- | ------------------- | | User-Agent | Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) ... | Browser user agent | | Referer | https://www.google.com/ | HTTP referer header |

Additional custom headers can be added as needed.

💡 Usage

Basic Example

1. Add Google News Decoder node to your workflow
2. Configure the Encoded URL field with a Google News link
3. Execute the workflow

Input:

https://news.google.com/rss/articles/CBMiXWh0dHBzOi8vd3d3...

Output:

{
  "guid": "CBMiXWh0dHBzOi8vd3d3...",
  "encodedUrl": "https://news.google.com/rss/articles/CBMi...",
  "decodedUrl": "https://techcrunch.com/2024/01/15/ai-story",
  "timestamp": "1705334400",
  "signature": "CBMiXWh0dHBz...",
  "cached": false
}

With Caching Enabled

First Request:

{
  "decodedUrl": "https://example.com/article",
  "cached": false
}

Subsequent Request (within TTL):

{
  "decodedUrl": "https://example.com/article",
  "cached": true,
  "cacheAge": "45s"
}

🔄 Example Workflow

graph LR
    A[RSS Feed Node] -->|encoded URLs| B[Google News Decoder]
    B -->|clean URLs| C[HTTP Request Node]
    C -->|article content| D[Process/Store]

    style B fill:#4285F4,color:#fff

Workflow Steps:

1. RSS Feed Node - Fetches Google News RSS feed with encoded links
2. Google News Decoder Node - Decodes URLs to original article links (with caching)
3. HTTP Request Node - Fetches the actual article content
4. Processing Node - Parse, store, or analyze the article data

Example Workflow JSON

{
  "nodes": [
    {
      "name": "RSS Feed",
      "type": "n8n-nodes-base.rssFeedRead",
      "parameters": {
        "url": "https://news.google.com/rss/search?q=technology"
      }
    },
    {
      "name": "Google News Decoder",
      "type": "n8n-nodes-google-news-decoder.googleNewsDecoder",
      "parameters": {
        "encodedUrl": "={{ $json.link }}",
        "advanced": {
          "enableCache": true,
          "cacheTTL": 10
        }
      }
    },
    {
      "name": "HTTP Request",
      "type": "n8n-nodes-base.httpRequest",
      "parameters": {
        "url": "={{ $json.decodedUrl }}"
      }
    }
  ]
}

🚀 Advanced Features

Custom RPC Header Base

If Google changes their API structure, you can update the RPC header base:

["X", "X", 1, [1, 1, 1], 1, 1, null, 0, 0, null, 0]

Format: Must be a valid JSON array matching Google's expected structure.

Custom Locale Configuration

For international Google News sources:

| Locale | Description | | ------- | ------------------------ | | US:en | United States (English) | | FR:fr | France (French) | | DE:de | Germany (German) | | JP:ja | Japan (Japanese) | | UK:en | United Kingdom (English) |

Cache Management

How the cache works:

1. LRU Eviction: When cache reaches 1000 items, oldest entries are removed
2. TTL Expiration: Cached results expire after configured minutes
3. Per-URL Keying: Each unique encoded URL has its own cache entry
4. In-Memory: Cache is lost on n8n restart (session-based)

Best Practices:

• Enable cache for workflows processing the same URLs repeatedly
• Use shorter TTL (1-5 min) for frequently updated news
• Use longer TTL (30-60 min) for stable article lists
• Disable cache for one-time bulk processing

🛠️ Development

Clone and Setup

# Clone the repository
git clone https://github.com/<your-username>/n8n-nodes-google-news-decoder.git

# Navigate to directory
cd n8n-nodes-google-news-decoder

# Install dependencies
npm install

# Build the project
npm run build

Build Commands

# Development build
npm run build

# Watch mode (auto-rebuild on changes)
npm run dev

# Clean build artifacts
npm run clean

# Local test (without n8n)
npm run test:local

Implementation Highlights

Core Features:

• ✅ Sequential item processing with error handling
• ✅ In-memory LRU cache with TTL
• ✅ Regex escaping for HTML attribute extraction
• ✅ Flexible article ID extraction from URL
• ✅ Configurable RPC header structure
• ✅ Custom HTTP headers support
• ✅ Continue-on-fail support

🧪 Testing

Local HTTP Test (without n8n)

Run a standalone test to verify the decoder works:

# Install test dependencies
npm install node-fetch

# Build the project
npm run build

# Run local test
npm run test:local

Expected Output:

🧪 Testing Google News Decoder (Local Mode)
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Input URL:  https://news.google.com/rss/articles/CBMi...
Decoded URL: https://techcrunch.com/2024/01/15/ai-article
GUID:       CBMiXWh0dHBz...
Timestamp:  1705334400

✅ Decode successful!

Testing in n8n

1. Create a new workflow
2. Add a Manual Trigger node
3. Add Google News Decoder node
4. Configure with test URL:

   https://news.google.com/rss/articles/CBMiXWh0dHBzOi8vd3d3LnRlY2hjcnVuY2guY29tLzIwMjQvMDEvMTUvYWktc3Rvcnkv0gEA

5. Execute and check output

Test Cache Behavior

1. Execute workflow with cache enabled
2. Check output: "cached": false
3. Execute again within TTL
4. Check output: "cached": true, "cacheAge": "15s"

🔧 Troubleshooting

Node Not Appearing in n8n

Problem: Node doesn't show up in the n8n interface

Solutions:

1. Verify installation in ~/.n8n/nodes/node_modules/

   ls ~/.n8n/nodes/node_modules/n8n-nodes-google-news-decoder

2. Check package.json has correct n8n configuration
3. Restart n8n completely

   pkill -f n8n
   n8n start

4. Check n8n logs for errors

   n8n start --loglevel debug

Decoding Errors

Issue: "Could not extract decoding keys from Google News page"

Causes & Solutions:

• ❌ Google changed HTML structure
  • ✅ Update Signature Attribute and Timestamp Attribute in Advanced options
  • ✅ Inspect a Google News page to find new attribute names
• ❌ Invalid encoded URL
  • ✅ Ensure URL starts with https://news.google.com/
  • ✅ URL must contain /articles/ path

Issue: "Invalid decode response format"

Causes & Solutions:

• ❌ Google changed API response structure
  • ✅ Update RPC Header Base in Advanced options
  • ✅ Check Google's current API format
• ❌ Network timeout
  • ✅ Check internet connection
  • ✅ Verify firewall allows requests to news.google.com

Issue: "Could not extract article ID"

Causes & Solutions:

• ❌ Non-standard URL format
  • ✅ URL must match pattern: /articles/[ARTICLE_ID]
  • ✅ ARTICLE_ID typically starts with CB

Cache Issues

Issue: Cache not working / Always returns "cached": false

Solutions:

1. Verify Enable Cache is set to true in Advanced options
2. Check Cache TTL is greater than 0
3. Ensure you're using the exact same encoded URL
4. Remember cache is lost on n8n restart

Issue: Want to clear cache

Solution:

• Restart n8n (cache is in-memory only)
• Or disable and re-enable cache in node settings

Build Errors

Problem: npm run build fails

Solutions:

# Clean and rebuild
rm -rf dist node_modules package-lock.json
npm install
npm run build

# If TypeScript errors persist
npm install --save-dev typescript@latest
npm run build

⚠️ Important Notes

• 🔄 This node relies on Google's internal URL structure and decoding endpoint
• ⚡ Google may change their URL format or API at any time
• 🔒 No API key or authentication required (uses public endpoints)
• 💾 Cache is in-memory and cleared on n8n restart
• 📊 Maximum 1000 cached items (LRU eviction)
• 🌐 Works with all Google News country domains
• ⚖️ Not affiliated with or endorsed by Google

Rate Limiting

While the node itself has no rate limits, Google may rate-limit requests. Recommendations:

• Use caching to reduce API calls
• Add delay between batches (use n8n's Wait node)
• Process items in smaller batches

📄 License

This project is licensed under the MIT License - see the LICENSE file for details.

🤝 Contributing

Contributions are welcome! Please feel free to submit a Pull Request.

1. Fork the repository
2. Create your feature branch (git checkout -b feature/AmazingFeature)
3. Commit your changes (git commit -m 'Add some AmazingFeature')
4. Push to the branch (git push origin feature/AmazingFeature)
5. Open a Pull Request

Contribution Ideas

• 🌍 Add proxy feature
• 🔄 Batch processing optimization

📬 Support

If you encounter any issues or have questions:

• 🐛 Report a bug
• 💬 Join n8n community

🙏 Acknowledgments

• Built for the n8n workflow automation platform
• Inspired by the need for clean, trackable news URLs
• Thanks to the n8n community for feedback and testing

Made with ❤️ for the n8n community

⭐ Star this repository if you find it helpful!