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OPML feed of podcasts

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Alan Ogilvie | 18:04 UK time, Wednesday, 30 April 2008

Hi all! I work in BBC Audio & Music's Distribution Technologies team, where we look after lots of things relating to how our output is delivered via the different technologies. I look after the IP delivery area which includes streaming strategy, capacity and infrastructure and looking after IP device manufacturers (eg. WiFi Radios). One of the things we have for these manufacturers is an aggregation feed of all our podcasts. I thought it would be good, now that it's automated, to talk about this on the Radio Labs blog.

[Oh, and if you are a device manufacturer who is looking to have a chat about our IP delivered content - don't hesitate to email me direct on the usual bbc email style - firstname.lastname@bbc.co.uk]

It's in a generic OPML, and I don't think I need to go through this with you as I think it's relatively self-explanatory (shout if you need me to).


http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio/opml/bbc_podcast_opml.xml

Or (as someone needed on the Backstage list) one with an .opml extension:


http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio/opml/bbc_podcast_opml.opml


Slight caveat - dateModified doesn't currently represent the correct date (it's stuck sometime in the past) - so ignore! We're working on that.

The OPML only lists all of the RSS feeds available, with links to them, and not the actual content of the RSS. This is the way this is supposed to work, and it means that it isn't tied to update every time a new episode appears. It will only update when an entire podcast is taken off, or added.

Also - you might find this node useful. It's not part of the OPML spec but, hey, it's XML so no worries:

<bbcstats genres="Urban|Music|Sport|News & Current
Affairs|Factual|Comedy & Quizzes|Entertainment|Religion & Ethics|Arts &
Drama|Classical|World|Pop & Chart|Rock &
Indie|Science|Childrens|History|Folk & Country|Jazz|Classic Pop &
Rock|Music Documentaries|Blues Soul & Reggae|Dance|Soap|Experimental"
language="en-gb|cy|es|ar|zh|ga|gd|fa|pt"
networks="1xtra|fivelive|wales|6music|worldservice|radio4|cymru|radio3|a
siannetwork|northernireland|radio1|tees|bbc7|radio2|scotland|manchester|
coventry|radio|oxford|lancashire|london|northamptonshire"
rssencs="mp3|m4a" rsstype="audio-download"/>

Which lists all of the podcast genres used, languages, networks available. It also lists rssencs which is simply a unique lists of the formats used, and the type that the podcast payloads are - in this case, these podcasts are always a download. This is for future purposes.

Since it's automated it reflects changes to the podcast offering (presented visually in the Podcast Directory), and we aim to keep this at the same location.

I'd like to hear any feedback you might have about this.

Update - 2008-06-17:

  • addition of the 'allow' attribute in the 'outline' nodes - can be set to 'all' to signify no geographical restriction, or 'uk' to signify that the podcast is restricted to the UK (which would mean that the servers won't allow IP addresses not located in the UK to download the podcast)
  • correction of the dateModified node to correctly represent the last time the OPML was updated.

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  • 1. At 10:48pm on 30 Apr 2008, ickbinberliner wrote:

    These opml files are really useful! Typing podcast addresses one by one into my mobile phone takes ages. I found a webpage that generated opml files when I copied in the individual rss adresses, but this official opml file is even better.

    Would it be possible to create a similar feed, that does not include the UK-only podcasts? The location restriction isn't immediately obvious on my phone when I subscribe to a podcast (although when I look at the opml file in a webbrowser, I can see that it is mentioned in the description).

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  • 2. At 10:36am on 01 May 2008, mavericksoul wrote:

    Is the opml file ok...?

    I can't get to it or any content using a web browser nor entering manually it as a podcast folder subscription on my N95

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  • 3. At 12:15pm on 01 May 2008, ickbinberliner wrote:

    The .opml file didn't work for me either, but the nokia podcast application on my e51 accepted the .xml file with no problems.

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  • 4. At 2:27pm on 01 May 2008, chivalry wrote:

    opml file doesn't work, the link is broken.

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  • 5. At 1:43pm on 13 May 2008, alanogilvie wrote:

    The links should be fine, fixed them last week after the comments. Only just managed to sign into the blog and reply today.

    To answer the question about identifying UK-only feeds, I've identified the data source I just need to update the transform and get it live. Will do this as soon as I can.

    Alan

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  • 6. At 5:15pm on 14 May 2008, amberluna wrote:

    If you're interested, I tried to add the .xml link as a Podcast feed in SqueezeCenter for my Squeezebox and got

    "Invalid Feed - unclosed token at line 22, column 8,byte 6459 at /XML/Parser.pm line 187"

    Trying the .opml link just gives "Invalid Feed - Timed out waiting for data"

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  • 7. At 5:31pm on 14 May 2008, amberluna wrote:

    Scratch that last comment, the .opml now picks up - it's working, love it!

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  • 8. At 5:42pm on 17 Jun 2008, alanogilvie wrote:

    Updated - see original post for update details.

    Alan

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  • 9. At 07:51am on 29 Jun 2008, alexdwsn wrote:

    Excellent facility, using .opml on my n95, works like a dream

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