get_iplayer - generate an RSS / podcast

Anyway, Ive been improving the BBC iPlayer custom podcast solution I created for the Raspberry Pi by making it more robust and re-factoring the code to introduce some ‘re-usability’ and future proofing.

A big area of change is the python program I originally created which creates an RSS (podcast) feed; this program recursed a directory path and created the xml file based on some hard-coded constants in the code such as “rssURL”.

So I created a re-usable component for creating RSS feeds from get_iplayer which I have dubbed “get_iplayer_genrss” which reads the get_iplayer download_history file and by using parameters passed in such as URL where downloads are e.g. “http://server/path/to/downloads” creates an RSS file based on its contents.

It supports functions such as:

Days in the past - only include in the RSS, downloads from the past [so many] days
Media type - only include downloads with a specific media type (tv, radio, etc)
Alternative directories - search alternative directories for the download, useful if the download has been copied to a different location

I have ‘open sourced’ the project and the code is being managed github https://github.com/martinohanlon/get_iplayer_genrss.git and would welcome any contributions, comments or feedback.

I am currently using get_iplayer_genrss to create rss feeds for radio shows which I download to my mobile phone and for tv shows which I use in XBMC.

For instructions on installation and usage see this page.