RSS & Atom Feeds

The @bdocs/plugin-rss plugin automatically generates RSS 2.0 and Atom feeds from your documentation routes. It supports i18n, collection filtering, and requires zero configuration — just install and your site has a feed.

Concepts & Architecture

How It Works

1. Route Collection: After the SSG build completes, the plugin reads all generated routes from the PluginContext. These are the same routes used to generate your site's pages.

2. Metadata Extraction: For each route, the plugin extracts title, description, excerpt, date, lastUpdated, and author from the route's frontmatter.

3. Feed Generation: The plugin generates valid XML feeds (RSS 2.0 and/or Atom) with proper entity escaping and RFC 2822 / ISO 8601 date formatting.

4. i18n Support: If your config has i18n enabled, the plugin automatically generates a separate feed for each locale. Routes are filtered by their locale prefix (e.g., /es/docs/... goes to the Spanish feed).

5. Output: Feed files are written to the build output directory alongside your static site files.

When Does It Run?

The plugin generates feeds through the build:generate lifecycle hook, which the build pipeline runs after the SSG output has been written to disk (with afterBuild kept as a compatibility fallback):

To generate feeds during development, set devMode: true in the plugin options.

Configuration

Minimal Setup

The plugin works with zero configuration. It automatically reads from your existing boltdocs.config.ts:

Plugin Options

All options are optional. Pass them to the plugin factory function:

rssPlugin({
  limit: 50,
  format: 'both',
  paths: ['/blog', '/docs'],
})

API Reference

Plugin Options Reference

Generated Files

The plugin writes feed files to the rss/ directory inside the build output:

Feed Item Fields

Each item in the feed corresponds to a documentation route:

Usage Examples

Basic Setup

import { defineConfig } from 'boltdocs'
import rssPlugin from '@bdocs/plugin-rss'

export default defineConfig({
  siteUrl: 'https://docs.example.com',
  plugins: [rssPlugin()],
})

Blog-Only Feed

If you have a blog collection and only want blog posts in your feed:

rssPlugin({
  collections: ['blog'],
  limit: 30,
  format: 'both',
})

Custom Path Filter

Only include routes under /docs/guides:

rssPlugin({
  paths: ['/docs/guides'],
  limit: 10,
})

RSS and Atom Together

Generate both formats simultaneously:

rssPlugin({
  format: 'both',
  limit: 50,
})

Troubleshooting

Feed not generated

• Check siteUrl: The plugin requires siteUrl to be set in your config. Without it, the plugin logs a warning and skips generation.
• Verify build output: Ensure the build completed successfully. The afterBuild hook only runs on successful builds.
• Check routes: The plugin generates feeds from all documentation routes. If no routes exist, the feed will be empty.

Feed has no items

• Check route filters: If you're using paths or collections, ensure your routes match the filter criteria.
• Check draft flag: Routes with draft: true in frontmatter are excluded from the feed.
• Verify frontmatter: Routes need at least a title to appear in the feed. Items without date or lastUpdated use the current timestamp.

i18n feeds missing

• Verify i18n config: Ensure i18n.defaultLocale and i18n.locales are properly configured.
• Check route locale prefixes: Routes must have locale prefixes (e.g., /es/docs/...) to be included in locale-specific feeds.

Wrong feed title

The feed title is derived from theme.title. If your title is an i18n object ({ en: 'Docs', es: 'Documentación' }), the plugin uses the matching locale key. If no match is found, it falls back to the first value.

Jesús Alcalá

Last updated on October 18, 2026