Overview
Send a POST request containing the target feed URL. The endpoint fetches the feed and extracts each article's website name, headline, publication timestamp, summary text, and destination link. It also tallies the total article count and flags whether the feed reached the maximum article limit.
Live Test RSS Feeds to JSON Source →
Formula
One function covers the whole catalog: the first argument names the source, the rest are its inputs, and the "field" pair says which single value lands in the cell. Formulas covers the grammar that applies to all of them.
=VERVE("rsstojson", A2, "field", "source")=VERVE.CALL("rsstojson", A2, "field", "source")A2 holds the url you are looking up. Drag the formula down and each row resolves on its own.
With literal values
Nothing has to come from a cell — typed values work the same way.
=VERVE("rsstojson", "https://www.nasa.gov/rss/dyn/breaking_news.rss", "field", "source")=VERVE.CALL("rsstojson", "https://www.nasa.gov/rss/dyn/breaking_news.rss", "field", "source")Inputs
Required inputs are positional, in the order below. Everything else is passed as a "name", value pair after them — the same shape as SUMIFS. Premium inputs are accepted on every plan but only take effect on plans that include them.
| Input | Type | Where it goes | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
urlRequired | string | argument 2 (A2) | The URL of the RSS feed you want converted into JSON format url |
What lands in your sheet
The "field" pair is what makes the formula resolve to one cell. Its value is a dot-path from the table below, so swapping it is how you pull a different value — one formula per column.
Seeing everything at once
Drop the "field" pair and the formula returns the whole response instead: two columns, field name on the left and value on the right, spilling from the cell you typed in.
=VERVE("rsstojson", A2)=VERVE.CALL("rsstojson", A2)The second row's table would land on top of the first's, and every cell after the first reads #REF! (#SPILL! in Excel). Keep one per sheet, or name a field, and leave the cells below and to the right empty.
Response fields
Paths are relative to data. Each one is exactly what the "field" pair accepts, so swapping it is how you pull a different value into a cell. On a plan without a Premium field the cell reads #PREMIUM(field) rather than a value, so a locked field never looks like a real answer.
| Use as "field" | Type | Example cell value | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
source | string | www.nasa.gov | Source domain of the RSS feed parsed |
articles | number | 10 | Total number of articles in parsed feed |
maxReached | boolean | false | Indicates if maximum articles limit was reached |
feed | array[10] | Array of parsed RSS feed articles | |
feed.0.website | string | NASA | Name of the website publishing the article |
feed.0.title | string | NASA IXPE’s Longest Observation Solves Black Hole Jets Mystery | Article headline title from feed |
feed.0.pubDate | string | Tue, 16 Dec 2025 21:23:13 +0000 | Publication date and time of article |
feed.0.description | string | Written by Michael Allen An international team of astronomers using NASA’s IXPE (Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer) has identified the origin of X-rays in a supermassive black hole’s jet, answering a question that has been unresolved since the earliest days of X-ray astronomy. Their findings are described in a paper published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters, […] | Article summary or full content text |
feed.0.link | string | https://www.nasa.gov/missions/ixpe/nasa-ixpes-longest-observation-solves-black-hole-jets-mystery/ | URL link to full article |
Filling a whole column
Both platforms make one batched call for a column rather than one request per cell, and both cost the same — 10 credits per row looked up. How you write it differs, because the two runtimes batch at different points.
=VERVE("rsstojson", A2:A100, "field", "source")In Google Sheets, give the arguments ranges and the answers spill down from the cell you typed in. Custom functions there run synchronously and in isolation, so dragged cells cannot be coalesced — the range form is how a column becomes one call. The "field" pair is required here: a per-row two-column table has nowhere to spill. Use a full column per input (A2:A100, not A2) — a single-cell reference is read as row 1 only and the rest of the column comes back blank.
In Excel, type the formula once and fill down — no range form and none needed, because its runtime is asynchronous and the add-in coalesces the calls a fill produces into a single batched request. Do not hand VERVE.CALL a range: Excel flattens it into positional arguments, so A2:A100 arrives as a hundred separate arguments and the cell reads #ERR rather than filling.
Either way, column A holds your url values and the answers land beside them, one row each, blank rows skipped.
When a cell doesn't fill
A failed lookup returns readable text starting with #ERR rather than a spreadsheet error, because Excel cannot show a custom message on a real error — you would get a bare #VALUE! with no reason. The trade-off is that IFERROR() will not catch it; test with LEFT(cell, 4) = "#ERR" instead. Error handling covers the rest.
| Cell reads | What happened |
|---|---|
#ERR Not connected | No API key saved. Open the side panel and connect your account. |
#ERR Replace <name> with a cell or value | A preview formula was copied as-is. Swap the placeholder for a cell reference. |
#ERR No "x" in rsstojson | An option name this source does not take. The message lists the ones it does. |
#ERR No data point "…" | The "field" path is not in the response. Check it against the table above. |
#PREMIUM(field) | The field exists but your plan does not include it. |
#ERR Out of credits | The cycle's credits are spent. Usage resets on your billing date. |
Before the formula works
The add-in reads the API key you saved once in the side panel — the key never goes in the formula, so a shared sheet does not leak it and a collaborator without access simply sees the last calculated values.
- Install the add-in for Google Sheets or Excel.
- Open the side panel and sign in, or paste a key from your dashboard.
- Type the formula above into any cell.
Use cases
- News Feed Aggregation
- Media monitoring dashboards fetch industry feeds to display normalized article summaries, publication timestamps, and source links in a single unified interface.
- Automated Social Scheduling
- When a company blog publishes a new post, marketing automation scripts read the feed items to queue social media posts containing the article link.
- Release Notes Tracking
- DevOps pipelines parse software release feeds to broadcast version headlines and update summaries directly into developer communication channels.
- Content Ingestion Pipelines
- To index external articles without writing custom XML scrapers, search engineers convert syndicated feeds into JSON records for database storage.
Other ways to use RSS Feeds to JSON
Set up RSS Feeds to JSON on VerveSheets, or reach the same source a different way. Your VerveSheets account and credits work on all of them — one key, one balance.
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