rssfeeder
It is a simple podcast feeder downloading RSS podcasts in an incremental way. The solution consists of several simple bash scripts easy to customiz and adjust to someone particular needs.
Solution description
The solution is designed to be run as a crontab job on daily or even hourly basis. It keeps the history of podcasts already downloaded and select only new programms published after the last download.
The general flow
- The rssfeeder script read a list of RSS pages (for instance: https://www.theguardian.com/news/series/todayinfocus/podcast.xml).
- Extracts the list of programs, usually mp3 files, using XPath /rss/channel/item/enclosure/@url.
- Compares the list with the list of podcasts already downloaded and downloads only new ones.
- Stores the results in the podcast directory. The directory structure is defined below.
Podcast directory
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2020-12-19 : Daily directories
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2020-12-20
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2020-12-21
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2020-12-22
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2020-12-23
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histlog.log : Log file
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http-downloads.bbc.co.uk-podcasts-radio3-r3arts-rss.xml : Log file regarding a single podcast RSS
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http-downloads.bbc.co.uk-podcasts-radio4-aitm-rss.xml
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podcastfailed.log : List of failed podcast, for instance, the podcast is listed in RSS but URL points to non-existing file
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podcast.log : List of all podcasts already downloded. rssfeeder uses this file to ignore podcasts
Usage description
The solution consists of one bash script file and number of template files to utilize.
./rssfeeder.sh /podcast directory/ /list of rss urls/
Example: ./rssfeeder.sh /mnt/usb/podcast bp.conf
Parameter description
| Parameter | Description | Example |
|---|---|---|
| podcast directory | Directory where podcasts are stored in daily basis | /mnt/usb/podcast |
| list of rss urls | File containing list of rss url. Every line contains a single RSS site | bp.conf |
Template
https://github.com/stanislawbartkowski/rssfeeder/tree/main/template
| File | Description |
|---|---|
| bp.conf | Example file with list of RSS sites |
| cronjob.sh | Example of cron job launching rssfeeder |
| crontab | Example of crontab |
| testdown.sh | Test bash script file executing rssfeeder.sh |