The Node

Posts Tagged ‘python’

PodGrab, my Python open source command-line downloader has been updated to version 1.1.0. This will probably be the last version aside from minor bug fixes. New in this version is import/export support for OPML files and more media formats supported than just MP3. It now supports pretty much every type of downloadable audio/video media podcast format out there, aside from pure text feeds. The full list is MP3, M4V, OGG, FLV, MP4, MPG/MPEG, WMA, WMV and WEBM. It currently uses SQLite for it’s subscription database, but if I get enough requests or I want it for myself I’ll add MySQL database support.

You can grab the new version here.

PodGrab, my open source audio podcast RSS downloader has been updated to version 1.0.3. This is the final release before PodGrab 1.2 comes out. I’m planning to add OPML import/export support for the next release.

Fixes for this version include:-

- Downloading previous episodes of a podcast now works again :-)
- Various error detection routines for incorrectly formatted podcast item dates.
- Disallows you to add a podcast subscription to the database if it already exists.
- When you delete a subscription, the files are also downloaded from the podcast download directory.
- Download directory now defaults to ‘podcasts’ rather than ‘Podcasts’ as this was annoying with Linux tab auto-complete.

You can download the latest version here.

PodGrab, my open source command line RSS Podcast downloader, has been updated to version 1.0.2. This update fixes an issue with RSS feeds that are not working properly and recovers from this error gracefully. If you’ve downloaded it before, please get the new version here

PodGrab, my open source command line RSS Podcast downloader, has been updated to version 1.0.1. This update simply fixes a few bugs. If you’ve downloaded it before, please get the new version here

I’ve been using gPodder as a podcast downloader for quite a while, which is great for a desktop system like Ubuntu, but less awesome (i.e. can’t be done) for cron-jobbing on my server. What I wanted was something I could use to store my podcast subscriptions and set it up as a cron job on my server and download all my podcasts to my server whenever there was a new episode out. I had a look around on the net for an RSS-based podcast downloader for the command line and couldn’t find one. I mean, not one.
Since I’ve been meaning to learn Python for quite a while, I thought this would be the ideal opportunity to learn a bit of Python and get a useful tool out of it that I could actually use. So, without further ado, I present to you PodGrab, my Python podcast downloader.

It is very simple to use although if you’re using Windows, you may need to download some extra modules – but since this isn’t a Windows site we’ll forget about that :)

Once you’ve downloaded it, you can add a new feed URL with: -


PodGrab.py -s http://some.feed.url.xml


This will store the feed as a subscription and download the latest episode. Sometimes (as I have wanted to do in the past), you simply want to download all episodes of a particular podcast without subscribing to it. You can do this with: -


PodGrab.py -d http://some.feed.url.xml


If you want to list your current subscriptions, you can use: -


PodGrab.py -l


which will list all your current subscriptions. You can delete a subscription with: -


PodGrab.py -un http://some.feed.url.xml


The program also has the ability to mail you if you add an e-mail address, list mail addresses and such. Type


PodGrab.py -h


for a full list of command line switches. To update your podcast subscriptions when using in conjunction with cron, you simply use: -


PodGrab.py -u


and the program will check each feed for a new episode. By default, all podcast downloads are stored in a subdirectory called “Podcasts” off wherever you run PodGrab for the first time, but this is easily changed in the code if you desire. The subscriptions are all stored in a file called “PodGrab.db” which is a small SQLite database. In a future version, I may add MySQL support.

Anyway, you can download PodGrab here. I hope it’s useful to somebody. If you find any major bugs or suggestions for improvements, my e-mail address is in the code. I hope you enjoy it :-)