RSS Feed in a 11ty site

Dave Rupert is right. Really Simple Syndication or RSS is a great way for people to digest their favorite blog articles with a RSS reader of their choice not be bombarded with ads, click-bait, and spam. So why not do your readers a favor and add it to your 11ty blog?

Install package #

Start in your 11ty project folder and install this package.

npm install @11ty/eleventy-plugin-rss --save-dev

Include in your 11ty configuration #

In the .eleventy.js file, require the plugin and include it in the module.exports function with any other plugins you may have.

const pluginRss = require("@11ty/eleventy-plugin-rss");

module.exports = function(eleventyConfig) {
    eleventyConfig.addPlugin(pluginRss);
};

Add to feed metadata #

In the _data/metadata.json file, add the unique metadata for the feed.

{
	"feed": {
		"subtitle": "Tech posts to educate, elevate, but mostly entertain.",
		"filename": "feed.xml",
		"path": "/feed/feed.xml",
		"url": "https://conr.dev/feed/feed.xml",
		"id": "https://conr.dev/"
	},
},

Create a RSS feed #

From your top-level of your 11ty project folder, create this template file.

touch src/feed.njk

Atom has several advantages over RSS: less restrictive licensing, IANA-registered MIME type, XML namespace, URI support, RELAX NG support. ^[1] Knowing this, we will copy and paste the Atom format to produce our feed.njk template. Other formats are available such as RSS and JSON. ^[2]

---
# Metadata comes from _data/metadata.json
permalink: "{{ metadata.feed.path }}"
eleventyExcludeFromCollections: true
---
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<feed xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom">
  <title>{{ metadata.title }}</title>
  <subtitle>{{ metadata.feed.subtitle }}</subtitle>
  <link href="{{ metadata.feed.url }}" rel="self"/>
  <link href="{{ metadata.url }}"/>
  <updated>{{ collections.posts | getNewestCollectionItemDate | dateToRfc3339 }}</updated>
  <id>{{ metadata.url }}</id>
  <author>
    <name>{{ metadata.author.name }}</name>
    <email>{{ metadata.author.email }}</email>
  </author>
  {%- for post in collections.posts | reverse %}
  {% set absolutePostUrl %}{{ post.url | url | absoluteUrl(metadata.url) }}{% endset %}
  <entry>
    <title>{{ post.data.title }}</title>
    <link href="{{ absolutePostUrl }}"/>
    <updated>{{ post.date | dateToRfc3339 }}</updated>
    <id>{{ absolutePostUrl }}</id>
    <content type="html">{{ post.templateContent | htmlToAbsoluteUrls(absolutePostUrl) }}</content>
  </entry>
  {%- endfor %}
</feed>

Important: This code assumes you save your date frontmatter in UTC format, not your local timezone.

---
date: 2022-01-01T00:00:00Z 
---

That's it. You now have a Atom v1.0 feed on your 11ty website when you serve or build the project.

Check out mine and subscribe!
https://conr.dev/feed/