Orgmode can read RSS feeds by calling the function org-feed-update-all. In this post I wrote a function that can read RSS entries from an orgmode table. Then it assigns these entries to the variable org-feed-alist. The basic idea is to manage my feeds list in a handy manner. My emacs init file is written in orgmode format, so I can edit my RSS feed entries in my init.org to add or remove entries in a convenient manner. Thus, the following code chunks are into my Emacs init file.

Emacs lisp function for reading the table

Table with the data

The variable org-feed-alist has four arguments: name, URL, file, headline (see C-h v org-feed-alist or (describe-variable 'org-feed-alist)).

#+NAME: table-rss
| Music Perception        | http://mp.ucpress.edu/rss/current.xml                 | ~/rss/feeds.org | Music Perception - Current Issue |
| Frontiers in Psychology | http://journal.frontiersin.org/journal/psychology/rss | ~/rss/feeds.org | Frontiers in Psychology          |
| Nature Podcast          | http://feeds.nature.com/nature/podcast/current        | ~/rss/feeds.org | Nature Podcast                   |
| Nature Journal          | http://feeds.nature.com/nature/rss/current            | ~/rss/feeds.org | Nature Journal - Current Issue   |

Read entries from org table

The following function rss-feed is based on this example.

  #+BEGIN_SRC emacs-lisp :session :results silent
  (defun rss-feed (table)
    "Get RSS feed from the table and assign its contents to org-feed-alist."
    (setq mylst nil)
    (while table
      (setq mylst (cons (car table) mylst))
      (setq table (cdr table)))
    (setq org-feed-alist mylst))
  #+END_SRC

Call elisp function rss-feed

Run rss-feed function to set the value of the variable org-feed-alist.

  #+BEGIN_SRC emacs-lisp :session :var tbl=table-rss :results silent
  (rss-feed tbl)
  #+END_SRC

Update RSS feed

M-x org-feed-update-all

General discussion

Orgmode RSS feed are not handy. One major drawback is that there is no correspondence between published date and time of the feeds. Instead org feeds contain the information of the retrieved date and time. I also noticed that some RSS feeds are not compatible. While, the orgfeeds are in orgmode document format, which gives plenty of opportunities, it seems the elfeed is more appropriate library for RSS feeds.