support for xml-file to configure a new feed

[jonashogstrom]

Hi

We publish alot of rss-feeds for a very specific purpose. They contain mp3-files that are generated from note-files for the members of my choir. Most of the members have installed Beyond Pod on their phones to be able to download the files that we publish. HOwever, each time they add a new feed, they need to go in and modify the settings like this:
* type in the URL manually
* set the category
* download [99] episodes
* keep at most [99] episodes
* (More settings) Force unique names: off
* (More settings) Alow Episode deletions: off

I would like to publish an xml-file called <MyFeed>.BeyondPodConfig that contained all of the above (any other setting that can be set for a feed should also be possible to set in this file). This way I could just post links to these files on our website, and they could download the new file and have beyondpod autoconfigure the feed.

The exact format of the file is irrellevant for me, a plain textfile with on setting per row or a proper xml-file would work equally well. Important though is that BP could register a file-handler for this filetype so that it automatically triggers when the browser downloads this file. This would be similar to pcast-files for itunes.

Possible?

Best regards, Jonas

[StefanK]

Jonas,

Currently there are 2 way to do something similar - the simplest is to just post a link to the feeds on your web site and try to open the link from within the devices's browser. If Android detects that the link is to an RSS feed it will open BeyondPod and offer you to add the feed (so you don't have to type it.) As far as category, the category will also be automatically set to the current category. Download and Keep are also set to the global defaults (as Set in Settings > Feed Defaults) so you have to set them just once.

Another approach is to create an OPML file that has links to your feeds and post it on your server. You can then add a new feed and enter the URL of the OPML file as a feed URL. BeyondPod will create a special type of feed that when you open it, it will download the OPML from your server, open it internally and allow you to import any of the feeds that are in the OPML (same rules as ones above will apply). If generally this works for you, we can add a small enhancement to the OPML so you can specify additional parameters for each feed (like episodes to download/keep etc).

[juwlz]

I have no clue about creating RSS feeds, but the issue won't be BeyondPod-specific.

I Googled

create rss feed with password

and got lots of hits. Hopefully one of those will help you? Maybe you'll need to add "enclosure" or "podcast" to your search to get hits specific to podcast feeds.

Julie

[PaulG]

Jonas,

Currently there are 2 way to do something similar - the simplest is to just post a link to the feeds on your web site and try to open the link from within the devices's browser. If Android detects that the link is to an RSS feed it will open BeyondPod and offer you to add the feed (so you don't have to type it.) As far as category, the category will also be automatically set to the current category. Download and Keep are also set to the global defaults (as Set in Settings > Feed Defaults) so you have to set them just once.

I do something similar for audiobooks - I have a little script that generates RSS files and serves them locally, so I can treat audiobooks like any other RSS feed. For some reason, I can never get Android to detect them as RSS feeds - content-type is "application/rss+xml", name is always "rss.xml". Maybe 1 in 10 times I can get Android to tell that it's an RSS feed, but most times it just gets opened in Chrome. Any idea what Android is doing to detect that it's an RSS feed?

Regarding the second thing, it would be nice to have Category-specific default values for feeds, if possible. That way I can set the category "books" to always download all episodes, for example. It would also be nice to be able to specify that I only want to update a specific feed manually, since I only ever populate these feeds once, so it's a waste to have it auto-check them all when I refresh my feeds.

[juwlz]

I do something similar for audiobooks - I have a little script that generates RSS files and serves them locally, so I can treat audiobooks like any other RSS feed. For some reason, I can never get Android to detect them as RSS feeds - content-type is "application/rss+xml", name is always "rss.xml". Maybe 1 in 10 times I can get Android to tell that it's an RSS feed, but most times it just gets opened in Chrome. Any idea what Android is doing to detect that it's an RSS feed?

If you're generating your own feeds with a consistent address format, it should be all or nothing. When you click on a link, Android looks to see which applications have "volunteered" to be allowed to open links matching various patterns of strings in the URL (e.g. rss, podcast, etc. in the address). If you haven't set a default app for that pattern, and the pattern is one of the ones that BeyondPod recognises as a likely podcast feed, then Android will offer BP as one of the apps that can open the link.

You may find that it helps to clear app defaults (in your system settings) for Chrome, in case you have inadvertently associated a podcast URL pattern with Chrome.

Regarding the second thing, it would be nice to have Category-specific default values for feeds, if possible. That way I can set the category "books" to always download all episodes, for example. It would also be nice to be able to specify that I only want to update a specific feed manually, since I only ever populate these feeds once, so it's a waste to have it auto-check them all when I refresh my feeds.

Category-specific defaults sound like a nice idea, until you remember that a feed can be in more than one category, in which case you get a fight for which category take priority. One option, of course, would be to use the first category for the feed defaults, and if enough people are interested, it may be considered for a future version of BeyondPod.

HTH
Julie