RSS Feed Macro

The RSS feed macro embeds an RSS feed on a page. It can display the contents of external feeds, or of internal feeds generated by Confluence. To display blog posts or to list recently updated pages in a space, use the Feed Builder to create an internal feed, then render it using this macro.

CAUTION: Including unknown HTML inside a webpage is dangerous.

HTML inside an RSS feed can contain active scripting components. This means that it would be possible for a malicious attacker to present a user of your site with script that their web browser would believe came from you. Such code could be used, for example, to steal a user's authentication cookie and give the attacker their Confluence login password.

The RSS macro will only be available if it has been enabled by your Confluence administrator. Also, your Confluence Administrator can define a whitelist of trusted URLs. You will see an error message on the Confluence page, if the included URL is not in the whitelist.

On this page:

Usage with the Macro Browser
Usage with the Wiki Markup Editor
Parameters
Examples
Working Example
How Up to Date is the Feed?
What Happens to a Page Containing a Disallowed URL?
Authentication
Accessing Internal HTTPS Feeds

Usage with the Macro Browser

To insert the RSS feed macro into a page using the Macro Browser,

Open the Confluence page or blog post that you want to edit, then click the 'Edit' button.
Click the Macro Browser icon on the toolbar. The macro browser window will open.
Scroll through the list of macros to find the one you want. Alternatively, start typing the macro name into the search box at the top right of the macro browser. Macros with a matching name will appear in the main pane.
Click the desired macro.
Set the macro parameters to your requirements. If desired, you can preview these changes by clicking 'Refresh'.
Click 'Insert' to add the macro onto the page.

You can also insert macros via autocomplete. For more information, see Using Autocomplete in the Rich Text Editor.

Once you've found the RSS feed macro and have added the required parameter values, click 'insert' to add it to your page.

Usage with the Wiki Markup Editor

Use the Wiki Markup editor to edit the page and insert the RSS macro. Replace the '

Unknown macro: {nomarkup}

http://www.example.com/rss/

' URL with your own feed link in this example:

{rss:url=http://www.example.com/rss/}

Parameters

Parameters are options that you can include in Confluence macros to control the content or format of the macro output. The table below lists relevant parameters for this macro.

Parameter names are different in the macro browser and in wiki markup. Below we show the macro browser parameter names in bold text, and the equivalent wiki markup parameters in (bracketed) text. If we do not show any parameter name for the wiki markup, then you should leave out the parameter name and simply include the parameter value as the first parameter, immediately after the colon (:).

Parameter	Required?	Default	Description
RSS Feed URL (`url`)	yes	none	The URL of the RSS feed link you want to show.
Maximum Number of Entries (`max`)	no	15	Limit the number of entries displayed.
Show Item Titles Only (`showTitlesOnly`)	no	false	Show only the titles of the news items, not the content.
Show Name/Title of RSS Feed (`titleBar`)	no	true	Hide the feeds title bar.

Examples

1. Limit the number of entries displayed

{rss:url=http://host.com/rss.xml|max=5}

2. Show only the RSS feed titles

{rss:url=http://host.com/rss.xml|showTitlesOnly=true}

3. Hide the feeds titlebar

{rss:url=http://host.com/rss.xml|titleBar=false}

Working Example

What you need to type:

{rss:url=http://www.abc.net.au/news/syndicate/breakingrss.xml|max=5|showTitlesOnly=true}

What you will get:

Could not retrieve http://www.abc.net.au/news/syndicate/breakingrss.xml - Page not found.

How Up to Date is the Feed?

By default, the RSS Feed macro caches the feed results for 60 minutes before fetching the data again.

If you wish to change the default caching, use the {cache} macro to define how often the RSS Feed macro fetches the feed updates. You may want to set the cache to a longer period, so that your page loads faster. Or you may want to retrieve feed results more often, if you need to see the updates sooner. You will need to install the [Cache plugin page] onto your Confluence site.

To enable caching:

Using the Confluence Repository, install the 'Scripting Plugin' and the 'Utilities Plugin'.
For each RSS macro that you wish to cache, surround your RSS macro with a Cache macro. For example, to cache feeds for 30 minutes:
```
{cache:refresh=30m}
{rss:url=http://rss.news.yahoo.com/rss/stocks|max=5}
{cache}
```
The [Cache plugin page] provides more information on customising the cache behaviour.

What Happens to a Page Containing a Disallowed URL?

Your Confluence Administrator can set up a whitelist of allowed URLs. If this is the case, you may see an error on the pages which contain the RSS macro.

Authentication

Adding Login Information for Confluence Feeds

You can add your Confluence username and password to the feed URL, so that the RSS Feed Macro can log in to Confluence.
Please note that if you do this, someone with access to your RSS newsreader configuration can read your password.

Private Feeds from External Sites

RSS feeds which require authentication cannot be accessed using the RSS Macro.

Accessing Internal HTTPS Feeds

This applies only to Confluence instances which have enabled HTTPS for all content. If your site is fully HTTPS, the RSS macro cannot access internal feeds. To enable the RSS macro to access internal feeds without affecting your HTTPS setup, enable local-only HTTP access:

Shut down Confluence.
Consult the SSL guide to enable HTTP access to Confluence. You'll want to ensure that you have an HTTP connector and an SSL connector, both commented in. This means that Confluence will be accessible via both HTTP and HTTPS. However, you should not have a redirect port, nor rules in web.xml to redirect all traffic.
Instead of using web.xml to redirect traffic, insert a firewall rule to redirect all HTTP requests not from the Confluence server to the equivalent HTTPS URL. This ensures that users will only be able to access Confluence via HTTPS, as intended. If you have still left HTTP access for attachments enabled (to avoid the IE download bug) you must selectively enable those URLS as well.
Modify your Confluence RSS macro feed link to use the HTTP URL, and restart Confluence.

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