Generate a JSON Feed with Laravel

JSON Feed is a new standard to formalize a JSON based RSS feed that aims to simplify creating feeds by doing away with the XML standard. Implementing a feed for your site is simple, and the spec is surprisingly clear.

Here is a simple example of it:

{
    "version": "https://jsonfeed.org/version/1",
    "title": "My Example Feed",
    "home_page_url": "https://example.org/",
    "feed_url": "https://example.org/feed.json",
    "items": [
        {
            "id": "2",
            "content_text": "This is a second item.",
            "url": "https://example.org/second-item"
        },
        {
            "id": "1",
            "content_html": "<p>Hello, world!</p>",
            "url": "https://example.org/initial-post"
        }
    ]
}

I just implemented this feed format for Laravel News, and you can find the results here. As a quick example let’s go through setting up a feed like this.

#Grab a list of Posts

The first step is to grab a list of records from the database. For this site the items are stored in a “Posts” table and using Eloquent I grab the latest 20 for the feed:

$posts = Post::limit(20)->get();

#Setup the main JSON Feed data

The JSON Feed spec has a few optional top level fields such as title, feed URL, site icon, and more. Since these are not dynamic I added them to an array manually:

$data = [
    'version' => 'https://jsonfeed.org/version/1',
    'title' => 'Laravel News Feed',
    'home_page_url' => 'https://laravel-news.com/',
    'feed_url' => 'https://laravel-news.com/feed/json',
    'icon' => 'https://laravel-news.com/apple-touch-icon.png',
    'favicon' => 'https://laravel-news.com/apple-touch-icon.png',
    'items' => [],
];

The empty items will hold all of our posts.

#Add the JSON Feed Items

The final step is to loop through all of our $posts and add it to the items array. Here is an example using my data:

foreach ($posts as $key => $post) {
    $data['items'][$key] = [
        'id' => $post->id,
        'title' => $post->title,
        'url' => 'https://laravel-news.com/'.$post->uri,
        'image' => $post->featured_image,
        'content_html' => $post->parsed_content,
        'date_published' => $post->created_at->tz('UTC')->toRfc3339String(),
        'date_modified' => $post->updated_at->tz('UTC')->toRfc3339String(),
        'author' => [
            'name' => $post->user->name
        ],
    ];
}

The only part that is unique is the time stamps. I’m utilizing Carbon’s features to convert to UTC and then to the RFC 3339 format which the JSON spec requires.

#Final Results

Here is the complete final method:

public function json()
{
    $posts = Post::active()->limit(20)->get();
 
    $data = [
        'version' => 'https://jsonfeed.org/version/1',
        'title' => 'Laravel News Feed',
        'home_page_url' => 'https://laravel-news.com/',
        'feed_url' => 'https://laravel-news.com/feed/json',
        'icon' => 'https://laravel-news.com/apple-touch-icon.png',
        'favicon' => 'https://laravel-news.com/apple-touch-icon.png',
        'items' => [],
    ];
 
    foreach ($posts as $key => $post) {
        $data['items'][$key] = [
            'id' => $post->id,
            'title' => $post->title,
            'url' => 'https://laravel-news.com/'.$post->uri,
            'image' => $post->featured_image,
            'content_html' => $post->parsed_content,
            'date_created' => $post->publishes_at->tz('UTC')->toRfc3339String(),
            'date_modified' => $post->updated_at->tz('UTC')->toRfc3339String(),
            'author' => [
                'name' => $post->user->name
            ],
        ];
    }
    return $data;
}

One thing to notice is that with Laravel we do not have to set any special headers or really anything. Just return the $data array, and it’ll automatically be converted to JSON and have the proper headers.

If you’d like to implement a package for this or need a more advanced setup check out the brand new LaravelJsonFeed package by Mateus Guimarães.