Feed Monitor

What is a feed monitor?

The Distill Feed Monitor tracks various web feeds, such as RSS and Atom, and automates the process of monitoring updates from multiple online sources.

Supported HTTP Methods for Feed Monitoring

• GET: Retrieves data from a specified resource and is the most commonly used method for Feed monitoring. The feed monitor uses GET requests to retrieve the latest content from the feed URL. The server hosting the RSS feed returns the requested data in response to these GET requests.

• POST, PUT, PATCH, DELETE: These methods are typically used for creating new feeds, updating, partially modifying, or deleting them, respectively. However, these methods are not used for feed monitoring.

How to add a Feed monitor using Distill?

1. Open the Watchlist from the Web app at https://monitor.distill.io or navigate to your browser extension’s Watchlist.

2. Click Add Monitor -> Feed.

3. Enter the URL of the web service you want to monitor in the URL field. You can configure any additional HTTP request parameters, headers, or body content if your web service requires these for access.

4. Click on the “GO” button. This action will send an HTTP GET request to the specified Feed URL.

5. Once the feed loads, click on “Select”.

6. The Options page for the monitor’s configuration opens up.

7. Set the desired check interval, alert actions, and conditions.

8. Once done, click “Save” and the Feed monitor should appear in your watchlist.

Here is a video guide with steps to set up a feed monitor.

How to find the link for a feed on a page?

Many websites that offer RSS feeds display an RSS icon, which is usually an orange square with white radio waves. Clicking on this icon will typically take you to the feed URL or provide a link to it.

Some websites use standard patterns for their feed URLs. You can try adding /feed, /rss, or /atom to the end of the website’s main URL.

Another method is to view the page’s source code. For this, right click on the page and choose ‘View Page Source’ from the options. This will open up the HTML view of the page. Here, search for keywords like “Feed”, “RSS” or “Atom”.

You should be able to find the link of the feed. Copy the URL in the Href and use it to set up your monitor.

• If you want to monitor a JSON feed, then you can use JSON monitoring.
• To monitor XML files other than RSS and Atom feeds, consider using XML monitoring.

If you need help with a feed monitor or have a feed URL that is not handled, feel free to contact us using our Distill forum. You can explore existing discussions or post to get help on any topic.