How does this service work?

Feed43 engine converts free-form HTML or XML documents to valid RSS feeds by extracting snippets of text or HTML by means of applying search patterns, and then joining these snippets together using output templates to form user-friendly content of feed's items. The principle of extracting specific data from source documents is also known as “HTML scraping”.

The procedure of setting up a feed is the following:

1. Find a web page with the content that interests you.
2. Create a new feed on our site, which points to that web page.
3. In feed parameters, define search patterns and output templates for this feed, and get the link to your feed.
4. Subscribe to this feed using your favorite feed reader (aggregator).
5. Optionally, protect your feed with password so no one could alter it.

Once the feed is set up, the service works as follows:

1. Your feed reader sends request to our server to download the feed.
2. Feed43, in it's turn, downloads the original source URL, processes it, converts to valid RSS feed on the fly, and returns it to feed reader application.
3. Feed reader displays the contents of this feed to you.

Read next: Understanding search patterns and output templates