Need help to create the first testing route

[affhp]

I am trying to create a testing route using example.com in order to understand how RSSHub and typescript works, since i have zero knowledge in this language.
In my testing, however, it just throw an error that I have no idea how to debug: Error: this route is empty, please check the original site or <a href="https://github.com/DIYgod/RSSHub/issues/new/choose">create an issue</a>
I was expecting some fetch error, but it says it is empty.... so confused.

My testing route looks like this:

diff --git a/lib/routes/example/latest.ts b/lib/routes/example/latest.ts
new file mode 100644
index 000000000..b1f0f3801
--- /dev/null
+++ b/lib/routes/example/latest.ts
@@ -0,0 +1,72 @@
+import { load } from 'cheerio';
+
+import type { Route } from '@/types';
+import cache from '@/utils/cache';
+import got from '@/utils/got';
+import ofetch from '@/utils/ofetch';
+import { parseDate } from '@/utils/parse-date';
+
+const currentURL = 'https://example.com';
+
+export const route: Route = {
+    path: '/latest',
+    categories: ['new-media'],
+    example: '/example/latest',
+    parameters: { },
+    features: {
+        requireConfig: false,
+        requirePuppeteer: false,
+        antiCrawler: false,
+        supportBT: false,
+        supportPodcast: false,
+        supportScihub: false,
+    },
+    radar: [
+        {
+            source: [],
+        },
+    ],
+    name: 'example testing',
+    maintainers: ['the_user'],
+    handler,
+    url: 'example.com',
+    description: '',
+};
+
+async function handler(ctx) {
+    // const { category = '', id = '' } = ctx.req.param();
+    // const limit = Number.parseInt(ctx.req.query('limit') || '20', 10);
+    // const hasTopicId = id && Object.hasOwn(categories, category);
+
+    const response = await got(currentURL);
+
+    const $ = load(response);
+
+    // We use a Cheerio selector to select all 'li' elements with a class name that starts with 'ListItem-module__listItem__' that
+    // are within a 'ul' element with a class name which starts with 'ListView-module__ul__'.
+    const items = $('div')
+        // We use the `toArray()` method to retrieve all the DOM elements selected as an array.
+        .toArray()
+        // We use the `map()` method to traverse the array and parse the data we need from each element.
+        .map((item) => {
+            const $item = $(item);
+            // We use `first()` to select the first 'a' element within the current item
+            // as there are multiple 'a' elements in each item, and we need to specify which one we want to use.
+            const h = $item.find('h1').first();
+            const p = $item.find('p').first();
+            return {
+                title: h.text(),
+                // We need an absolute URL for `link`, but `a.attr('href')` returns a relative URL.
+                link: `${rootUrl}`,
+               pubDate: parseDate('1970-01-02','x'),
+                author: 'the_user',
+                category: 'hi',
+            };
+        });
+
+    return {
+        title: 'what the',
+        link: currentURL,
+        item: items,
+    };
+}
diff --git a/lib/routes/example/namespace.ts b/lib/routes/example/namespace.ts
new file mode 100644
index 000000000..aecafb538
--- /dev/null
+++ b/lib/routes/example/namespace.ts
@@ -0,0 +1,7 @@
+import type { Namespace } from '@/types';
+
+export const namespace: Namespace = {
+    name: 'Example',
+    url: 'example.com',
+    lang: 'zh-TW',
+};

[dosubot[bot]]

Hi @affhp! I'm Dosu and I'm helping the RSSNext team.

The issue is on this line in your handler:

const response = await got(currentURL);
const $ = load(response);

In RSSHub, got() returns a response object, not the HTML body directly. You need to use response.data to access the HTML content [1]:

const response = await got(currentURL);
const $ = load(response.data);  // ← use response.data

Because you're passing the entire response object to load(), Cheerio can't parse it properly, your selectors find nothing, and the items array ends up empty. RSSHub's middleware then throws the "this route is empty" error whenever data.item is empty or undefined [2].

There's also a secondary bug — you reference rootUrl in the link field but you only defined currentURL. That would cause a ReferenceError if items were actually found.

Here's the corrected handler core:

async function handler(ctx) {
    const response = await got(currentURL);
    const $ = load(response.data);

    const items = $('div')
        .toArray()
        .map((item) => {
            const $item = $(item);
            const h = $item.find('h1').first();
            const p = $item.find('p').first();
            return {
                title: h.text(),
                link: currentURL,  // was `rootUrl` (undefined)
                pubDate: parseDate('1970-01-02'),
                author: 'the_user',
                category: 'hi',
            };
        });

    return {
        title: 'what the',
        link: currentURL,
        item: items,
    };
}

Note that example.com only has one <h1> and one <p> inside a single <div>, so your selector $('div').toArray() will match multiple nested divs and produce several items with mostly empty titles. You may want to be more specific with your selector, but at least the error should go away once you fix response.data.

To reply, just mention @dosu.

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[affhp]

Thanks!! It really works!!! This is a good start!
Thank you so much for your help!!!