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Discoverability · Next.js (App Router)

Should my site publish an RSS feed in Next.js (App Router)

A feed is the one distribution channel you own outright — no algorithm decides who sees it, and it keeps working when a platform changes its mind. Aggregators and newsletter tools pull from it, and several AI answer engines use it to discover new pages faster than a crawl would.

The fix for Next.js (App Router)

13x detects your framework from the response and hands you this version rather than the generic one — below 50% confidence it hedges and gives you the generic one instead.

Serve it from a route handler so it regenerates with your content:

ts code
// app/rss.xml/route.ts
import { getPosts } from "@/lib/posts";

export async function GET() {
  const posts = await getPosts();

  const items = posts
    .map(
      (post) => `    <item>
      <title>${escapeXml(post.title)}</title>
      <link>https://example.com/blog/${post.slug}</link>
      <guid isPermaLink="true">https://example.com/blog/${post.slug}</guid>
      <pubDate>${new Date(post.date).toUTCString()}</pubDate>
      <description>${escapeXml(post.summary)}</description>
    </item>`
    )
    .join("\n");

  const body = `<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<rss version="2.0" xmlns:atom="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom">
  <channel>
    <title>example.com</title>
    <link>https://example.com</link>
    <description>What you publish here</description>
    <atom:link href="https://example.com/rss.xml" rel="self" type="application/rss+xml" />
${items}
  </channel>
</rss>`;

  return new Response(body, {
    headers: { "content-type": "application/rss+xml; charset=utf-8" },
  });
}

function escapeXml(value: string) {
  return value.replace(/[<>&'"]/g, (char) =>
    ({ "<": "&lt;", ">": "&gt;", "&": "&amp;", "'": "&apos;", '"': "&quot;" })[char]!
  );
}

Escaping is not optional — one ampersand in a post title produces a feed that every reader rejects as malformed.

Then declare it in the root layout so it is discoverable from any page:

ts code
export const metadata: Metadata = {
  alternates: {
    types: { "application/rss+xml": "/rss.xml" },
  },
};

On a different stack? The general version of this fix explains what 13x checks and why it matters, without assuming a framework.

Check your Next.js (App Router) site

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