alexa-samples/skill-sample-nodejs-audio-player

Play episodes from RSS feed?

Closed this issue · 28 comments

GeekedLife commented

Is there a possibility to pull episodes from the RSS feed instead of manually entering each file/episode?

tukeyclothespin commented

I used 'sync-request' to avoid issues with audioData being undefined on export (regular 'request' is an async call). Then xml2js to parse the rss. It's a hack but it works.

'use-strict';  
var request = require('sync-request');  
var xml2js = require('xml2js');  
var audioData;  
var res = request('GET',"http://feeds.feedburner.com/foxnews/podcasts/FoxNewsSundayAudio");  
var parseString = xml2js.parseString;  
parseString(res.getBody(), function(err,result){  
        var raw = result['rss']['channel'][0]['item'][0]['guid'][0]['_'];  
        var url = "https:/" + raw.substring(raw.search("mp3")+3,raw.length+1);  
        var title = result['rss']['channel'][0]['item'][0]['title'][0];  
        audioData = [{"title":title,"url":url}];  
});  
module.exports = audioData;
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jasonabradley commented

Neat solution. Works only if the rss feed uses https for audio urls.

sebsto commented

Correct, Alexa skills playing audio are required to use HTTPS for audio materials.

ramseyk39 commented

Hello - I got this to work but it is only grabbing the newest episode. How can I get it to grab all the episodes? Thanks

sebsto commented

you can navigate between episode by voice with "Alexa next" or "Alexa previous"

ramseyk39 commented

Thank you for your reply but every time I ask Alexa to do that, it says that I have reached the end of the playlist.

ramseyk39 commented

With regards to audio files needing HTTPS, I replaced http with https in the raw variable and the first episode played.

sebsto commented
djhrishi19 commented

I tried modifying the audioplayer using the above code... But lambda keeps on showing me a lot of modules missing one by one... eg promise , util-deprecate , asap etc etc... Could you tell me a solution to this? Or upload your own node_modules folder?

ramseyk39 commented

I uploaded them one by one, it takes a while because there are a lot. I am sure there is a better way tho

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djhrishi19 commented

Thanks for letting me know... At least now I know that it won't go on till infinity... @ramseyk39

djhrishi19 commented

On installing a lot of modules manually... I'm stuck on this error... "Cannot read property '_' of undefined"

ramseyk39 commented

Depending on your RSS feed, I am using soundcloud so for me to get this line to work:
var raw = result['rss']['channel'][0]['item'][0]['guid'][0]['_'];

I had to use this: var raw = result['rss']['channel'][0]['item'][0]['enclosure'][0]['$'].url;

djhrishi19 commented

Why did you replace the underscore with a dollar sign? and .url?

ramseyk39 commented

I Googled the issue and one of the results said to try it and it worked.

djhrishi19 commented

"enclosure": {
"@Length": "49880169",
"@url": "https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/XYZ.mp3"
},

My enclosure is like this. So should I use .url here as well?

ramseyk39 commented

I would try it. By using .url I didn't have to use this:
var url = "https:/" + raw.substring(raw.search("mp3")+3,raw.length+1);

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djhrishi19 commented

So the variable raw stored your url directly?

And so did you substitute url with raw in this line?

audioData = [{"title":title,"url":url}];

djhrishi19 commented

I'm getting this error after doing what you said and I cannot find what this means...

Cannot read property '0' of undefined

ramseyk39 commented

Basically, the rest looks like this. I had to replace http with https...
var urlfull = raw; //"http:/" + raw.substring(raw.search("url")+3,raw.length+1);
var url = urlfull.replace('http:/','https:/');
var titlefull = result['rss']['channel'][0]['item'][0]['title'][0];
var title = titlefull.replace('&', 'and');
audioData = [{"title":title,"url":url}];

djhrishi19 commented

Didn't you get this error?
Cannot read property '0' of undefined

Cuz my code is similar. And I'm getting that error.

ramseyk39 commented

I did at first but now I don't. My only issue is getting the entire rss feed to play. I can only get the latest episode.

djhrishi19 commented

For that I guess instead of getting title you can get the episode number and store them in audioData. So when user says episode 2 then it will check with audioData.

My code :
var url = result['rss']['channel'][0]['item'][0]['enclosure'][0]['$'].url;
var episode = result['rss']['channel'][0]['item'][0]['episode'][0];
MyPodcast = [{"episode":episode,"url":url}];

But I don't know how to get rid of the error Cannot read property '0' of undefined

ramseyk39 commented

Maybe change episode to title?

djhrishi19 commented

In RSS feed there is only one one and many . So why do and also have [0]?

djhrishi19 commented

What does the [0] signify? I'm guessing it stores the link as an array?

ramseyk39 commented

Item 0 is the first or latest episode. If you set URL item to 7 and Title item to 7 it jumps to the 8th episode. I just need to figure out how to increment it...

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saileshemitrr commented

I am trying to read anchor.fm RSS feed and the JSON object format is different. dont we have same schema definition?