get_podcasts.py

Problem Encountered:

• I like using a command line interface for most of my computing.
• I also like using non-standard audio applications on my mobile devices (e.g. Plex)
• I like podcasts
• I found a good command-line podcast application for subscribing to and downloading podcasts

HOWEVER

• I quickly discovered that the metadata provided on these downloaded files was severely lacking
• Additionally, this was a problem because some of those rss feeds (I'm looking at you, Patreon) use a random alphanumeric naming scheme for their 20-30 character long episode name.
• It was at this point that I really started valuing iTunes and other podcast repositories.

Problem Solved:

This script:

• checks a list of rss feeds
• checks for new episodes using etag, date-modified, or other methods
• grabs information from the xml feed for metadata encoding
• downloads the episode(s)
• properly encodes the metadata
• deposits the audio file in a location specified by you.

This script also:

• allows the user to run it and select multiple episodes from a podcasts rss feed

This script does not:

• require you to download every single episode from the rss feed in order to make use of it (no thank you, i already have all 300+ episodes of The Dollop, I don't need to download it again just because my sqlite db got corrupted).

How to use:

• default running of getPodcasts.py auto download the newest episode of each podcast in the config file if it hasn't already been downloaded (based on the podHistory file)
• running with -h or --help as an argument will display help
• running with -m or --menu will display the menu options for "All" or "Choose"

What this thing does

• When you run it (using python3) with the -m or --menu argument it will present you with two options. All or Choose.
• If you hit All it will then start cycling through your podConfig file entries
  • it pulls in and parses the rss feed from the url listed in the config file
  • it gets the titles etc. and displays the first 5 entries on the list
  • at that point you can choose to download one or a range/selection of episodes
    • you specify a range or a selection of episodes in the follow way
      • for episodes 3, 5, and 7 through 9 you'd enter: 3,5,7-9
  • After it downloads your selections it will then list the first five episodes of the next podcast in the list and so on.
• If you hit Choose it will then present you with a list of podcasts gleaned from the config file
  • you choose a podcast and then it gives you a list of the first five episodes etc.
  • at that point you can choose to download one or a range/selection of episodes
    • you specify a range or a selection of episodes in the follow way
      • for episodes 3, 5, and 7 through 9 you'd enter: 3,5,7-9
• If you run it with no arguments it will simply go through the list from config and get the newest episode that it has not already downloaded from each podcast.
  • it uses the podHistory config file in order to determine if it's already downloaded that episode (keeps the most recently downloaded url)
  • this is what you want to use if you want to automate it since it doesn't require any further input from you

Setup

edit the podConfig file:

• rss - the rss url for the podcast. You may have to search for this.
• artist, album, album_artist - these are for the metadata and will apply to every episode for this podcast that you download
• urlFormat - not used currently but i haven't removed it yet
• parameters - this is for situations where the podcast episode is not listed via an itunes_episode tag in the xml, but rather the episode number is in the title or the filename
  • this is tricky
  • example: Let's say that the title from the rss feed for this episode is "Ep372 - The Dollop - Episode Title"
  • in the script there is a function for getting the episode number
  • if eploc = title and epnum = no then:
    • the get episode number function will partition off the parts of the title that are not the episode number, but it needs some info from you
    • in the example above you want the partition function to look for the following parameters: p,2,-,0
    • here's what this does:
      • p,2: tells partition to partition things at the first "p" it sees in the string.
      • the string is the episode title listed above from the rss xml feed
      • the 2 tells it to keep everything after the "p" and drop the "p" and everything before the "p"
      • similarly, the -,0 tells it to looks for the first "-" in the string. The 0 means keep everything before the "-" but not the "-" or anything after it.
      • don't worry about the space or white space before or after the number, the script will strip that off.
    • the script will use the first two out of the four first and then it will do the second two.
    • keep that in mind when you are setting these
• eploc - if the itunes_episode tag is not present in the xml for the rss feed then you use this field to indicate "title" or "urlFilename" to indicate where the episode number is
• epnum - "yes" if itunes_episode tag is present, "no" if not
• snnum - "yes" if itunes_season tag is present, "no" if not
• rssparams - not used, but i haven't removed it yet
• podpath - where, in your file system, you want to save episodes of this podcast

edit the podHistory file:

• NOTE: You do not need to manually type any actual dates or tags or urls in this file. Just make a place for similar to the model provided in the pod_history file.

• last_url - last recorded mp3's url from the rss feed used
• last_downloaded_date - records the date of the last time downloaded
• etag - if the rss feed is populated with an etag (for use with identifying that a feed has been updated) it will store it here
• last_modified - if the rss feed, instead of an etag, uses a last_modified field it will store that date here