Use Google Feed API to Convert RSS to JSON

Here is a quick tip for anyone sick of working with the xml in RSS feeds. You can use the Google Feed API in your scripts to automatically convert the XML in the RSS feed to JSON which makes working with them much easier. For example, there is an RSS Feed from the Consumer Product Safety Commission and it has all the government recalls in the United States. Using this simple trick, you could easily pull the fresh feed on a regular basis and parse out information about recalls to use in your account. You can also configure Google Alerts to generate RSS feeds based on specific keywords you are interested in. For example, here is an RSS feed for the keyword "smx".

Thanks,
Russ

/******************************************
* Use Google Feed API to convert RSS to json
* Version 1.0 
* Created By: Russ Savage
* FreeAdWordsScripts.com
******************************************/
// Usage: var jsonData = convertRssToJson('http://www.cpsc.gov/en/Newsroom/CPSC-RSS-Feed/Recalls-RSS/');
function convertRssToJson(rssUrl) {
  var FEED_API_URL = "https://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/services/feed/load?v=1.0&q="
  var url = FEED_API_URL+encodeURIComponent(rssUrl);
  var resp = UrlFetchApp.fetch(url);
  if(resp.getResponseCode() == 200) {
    return JSON.parse(resp.getContentText());
  } else {
    throw "An error occured while trying to parse: "+rssUrl;
  }
}