Provided by: python-podcastparser-doc_0.6.10-2_all 
NAME
podcastparser - podcastparser Documentation
podcastparser is a simple and fast podcast feed parser library in Python. The two primary users of the
library are the gPodder Podcast Client and the gpodder.net web service.
The following feed types are supported:
• Really Simple Syndication (RSS 2.0)
• Atom Syndication Format (RFC 4287)
The following specifications are supported:
• Paged Feeds (RFC 5005)
• Podlove Simple Chapters
• Podcast Index Podcast Namespace
These formats only specify the possible markup elements and attributes. We recommend that you also read
the Podcast Feed Best Practice guide if you want to optimize your feeds for best display in podcast
clients.
Where times and durations are used, the values are expected to be formatted either as seconds or as RFC
2326 Normal Play Time (NPT).
import podcastparser
import urllib.request
feedurl = 'http://example.com/feed.xml'
parsed = podcastparser.parse(feedurl, urllib.request.urlopen(feedurl))
# parsed is a dict
import pprint
pprint.pprint(parsed)
For both RSS and Atom feeds, only a subset of elements (those that are relevant to podcast client
applications) is parsed. This section describes which elements and attributes are parsed and how the
contents are interpreted/used.
RSS
rss@xml:base
Base URL for all relative links in the RSS file.
rss/channel
Podcast.
rss/channel/title
Podcast title (whitespace is squashed).
rss/channel/link
Podcast website.
rss/channel/description
Podcast description (whitespace is squashed).
rss/channel/image/url
Podcast cover art.
rss/channel/itunes:image
Podcast cover art (alternative).
rss/channel/itunes:type
Podcast type (whitespace is squashed). One of ‘episodic’ or ‘serial’.
rss/channel/itunes:keywords
Podcast keywords (whitespace is squashed).
rss/channel/atom:link@rel=payment
Podcast payment URL (e.g. Flattr).
rss/channel/generator
A string indicating the program used to generate the channel. (e.g. MightyInHouse Content System
v2.3).
rss/channel/language
Podcast language.
rss/channel/itunes:author
The group responsible for creating the show.
rss/channel/itunes:owner
The podcast owner contact information. The <itunes:owner> tag information is for administrative
communication about the podcast and isn’t displayed in Apple Podcasts
rss/channel/itunes:category
The show category information.
rss/channel/itunes:explicit
Indicates whether podcast contains explicit material.
rss/channel/itunes:new-feed-url
The new podcast RSS Feed URL.
rss/channel/podcast:locked
If the podcast is currently locked from being transferred.
rss/channel/podcast:funding
Funding link for podcast.
rss/redirect/newLocation
The new podcast RSS Feed URL.
rss/channel/item
Episode.
rss/channel/item/guid
Episode unique identifier (GUID), mandatory.
rss/channel/item/title
Episode title (whitespace is squashed).
rss/channel/item/link
Episode website.
rss/channel/item/description
Episode description. If it contains html, it’s returned as description_html. Otherwise it’s
returned as description (whitespace is squashed). See Mozilla’s article Why RSS Content Module is
Popular
rss/channel/item/itunes:summary
Episode description (whitespace is squashed).
rss/channel/item/itunes:subtitle
Episode subtitled / one-line description (whitespace is squashed).
rss/channel/item/content:encoded
Episode description in HTML. Best source for description_html.
rss/channel/item/itunes:duration
Episode duration.
rss/channel/item/pubDate
Episode publication date.
rss/channel/item/atom:link@rel=payment
Episode payment URL (e.g. Flattr).
rss/channel/item/atom:link@rel=enclosure
File download URL (@href), size (@length) and mime type (@type).
rss/channel/item/itunes:image
Episode art URL.
rss/channel/item/media:thumbnail
Episode art URL.
rss/channel/item/media:group/media:thumbnail
Episode art URL.
rss/channel/item/media:content
File download URL (@url), size (@fileSize) and mime type (@type).
rss/channel/item/media:group/media:content
File download URL (@url), size (@fileSize) and mime type (@type).
rss/channel/item/enclosure
File download URL (@url), size (@length) and mime type (@type).
rss/channel/item/psc:chapters
Podlove Simple Chapters, version 1.1 and 1.2.
rss/channel/item/psc:chapters/psc:chapter
Chapter entry (@start, @title, @href and @image).
rss/channel/item/itunes:explicit
Indicates whether episode contains explicit material.
rss/channel/item/itunes:author
The group responsible for creating the episode.
rss/channel/item/itunes:season
The season number of the episode.
rss/channel/item/itunes:episode
An episode number.
rss/channel/item/itunes:episodeType
The episode type. This flag is used if an episode is a trailer or bonus content.
rss/channel/item/podcast:chapters
The url to a JSON file describing the chapters. Only the url is added to the data as fetching an
external URL would be unsafe.
rss/channel/item/podcast:person
A person involved in the episode, e.g. host, or guest.
rss/channel/item/podcast:transcript
The url for the transcript file associated with this episode.
ATOM
For Atom feeds, podcastparser will handle the following elements and attributes:
atom:feed
Podcast.
atom:feed/atom:title
Podcast title (whitespace is squashed).
atom:feed/atom:subtitle
Podcast description (whitespace is squashed).
atom:feed/atom:icon
Podcast cover art.
atom:feed/atom:link@href
Podcast website.
atom:feed/atom:entry
Episode.
atom:feed/atom:entry/atom:id
Episode unique identifier (GUID), mandatory.
atom:feed/atom:entry/atom:title
Episode title (whitespace is squashed).
atom:feed/atom:entry/atom:link@rel=enclosure
File download URL (@href), size (@length) and mime type (@type).
atom:feed/atom:entry/atom:link@rel=(self|alternate)
Episode website.
atom:feed/atom:entry/atom:link@rel=payment
Episode payment URL (e.g. Flattr).
atom:feed/atom:entry/atom:content
Episode description (in HTML or plaintext).
atom:feed/atom:entry/atom:published
Episode publication date.
atom:feed/atom:entry/media:thumbnail
Episode art URL.
atom:feed/atom:entry/media:group/media:thumbnail
Episode art URL.
atom:feed/atom:entry/psc:chapters
Podlove Simple Chapters, version 1.1 and 1.2.
atom:feed/atom:entry/psc:chapters/psc:chapter
Chapter entry (@start, @title, @href and @image).
Simplified, fast RSS parser
exception podcastparser.FeedParseError(msg, exception, locator)
Exception raised when asked to parse an invalid feed
This exception allows users of this library to catch exceptions without having to import the XML
parsing library themselves.
class podcastparser.PodcastHandler(url, max_episodes)
characters(chars)
Receive notification of character data.
The Parser will call this method to report each chunk of character data. SAX parsers may
return all contiguous character data in a single chunk, or they may split it into several
chunks; however, all of the characters in any single event must come from the same external
entity so that the Locator provides useful information.
endElement(name)
Signals the end of an element in non-namespace mode.
The name parameter contains the name of the element type, just as with the startElement
event.
startElement(name, attrs)
Signals the start of an element in non-namespace mode.
The name parameter contains the raw XML 1.0 name of the element type as a string and the
attrs parameter holds an instance of the Attributes class containing the attributes of the
element.
class podcastparser.RSSItemDescription
RSS 2.0 almost encourages to put html content in item/description but content:encoded is the
better source of html content and itunes:summary is known to contain the short textual description
of the item. So use a heuristic to attribute text to either description or description_html,
without overriding existing values.
podcastparser.file_basename_no_extension(filename)
Returns filename without extension
>>> file_basename_no_extension('/home/me/file.txt')
'file'
>>> file_basename_no_extension('file')
'file'
podcastparser.is_html(text)
Heuristically tell if text is HTML
By looking for an open tag (more or less:) >>> is_html(‘<h1>HELLO</h1>’) True >>> is_html(‘a < b <
c’) False
podcastparser.normalize_feed_url(url)
Normalize and convert a URL. If the URL cannot be converted (invalid or unknown scheme), None is
returned.
This will also normalize feed:// and itpc:// to http://.
>>> normalize_feed_url('itpc://example.org/podcast.rss')
'http://example.org/podcast.rss'
If no URL scheme is defined (e.g. “curry.com”), we will simply assume the user intends to add a
http:// feed.
>>> normalize_feed_url('curry.com')
'http://curry.com/'
It will also take care of converting the domain name to all-lowercase (because domains are not
case sensitive):
>>> normalize_feed_url('http://Example.COM/')
'http://example.com/'
Some other minimalistic changes are also taken care of, e.g. a ? with an empty query is removed:
>>> normalize_feed_url('http://example.org/test?')
'http://example.org/test'
Leading and trailing whitespace is removed
>>> normalize_feed_url(' http://example.com/podcast.rss ')
'http://example.com/podcast.rss'
Incomplete (too short) URLs are not accepted
>>> normalize_feed_url('http://') is None
True
Unknown protocols are not accepted
>>> normalize_feed_url('gopher://gopher.hprc.utoronto.ca/file.txt') is None
True
podcastparser.parse(url, stream, max_episodes=0)
Parse a podcast feed from the given URL and stream
Parameters
• url – the URL of the feed. Will be used to resolve relative links
• stream – file-like object containing the feed content
• max_episodes – maximum number of episodes to return. 0 (default) means no limit
Returns
a dict with the parsed contents of the feed
podcastparser.parse_length(text)
Parses a file length
>>> parse_length(None)
-1
>>> parse_length('0')
-1
>>> parse_length('unknown')
-1
>>> parse_length('100')
100
podcastparser.parse_pubdate(text)
Parse a date string into a Unix timestamp
>>> parse_pubdate('Fri, 21 Nov 1997 09:55:06 -0600')
880127706
>>> parse_pubdate('2003-12-13T00:00:00+02:00')
1071266400
>>> parse_pubdate('2003-12-13T18:30:02Z')
1071340202
>>> parse_pubdate('Mon, 02 May 1960 09:05:01 +0100')
-305049299
>>> parse_pubdate('')
0
>>> parse_pubdate('unknown')
0
podcastparser.parse_time(value)
Parse a time string into seconds
See RFC2326, 3.6 “Normal Play Time” (HH:MM:SS.FRACT)
>>> parse_time('0')
0
>>> parse_time('128')
128
>>> parse_time('00:00')
0
>>> parse_time('00:00:00')
0
>>> parse_time('00:20')
20
>>> parse_time('00:00:20')
20
>>> parse_time('01:00:00')
3600
>>> parse_time(' 03:02:01')
10921
>>> parse_time('61:08')
3668
>>> parse_time('25:03:30 ')
90210
>>> parse_time('25:3:30')
90210
>>> parse_time('61.08')
61
>>> parse_time('01:02:03.500')
3723
>>> parse_time(' ')
0
podcastparser.parse_type(text)
“normalize” a mime type
>>> parse_type('text/plain')
'text/plain'
>>> parse_type('text')
'application/octet-stream'
>>> parse_type('')
'application/octet-stream'
>>> parse_type(None)
'application/octet-stream'
podcastparser.remove_html_tags(html)
Remove HTML tags from a string and replace numeric and named entities with the corresponding
character, so the HTML text can be displayed in a simple text view.
podcastparser.squash_whitespace(text)
Combine multiple whitespaces into one, trim trailing/leading spaces
>>> squash_whitespace(' some text with a lot of spaces ')
'some text with a lot of spaces'
podcastparser.squash_whitespace_not_nl(text)
Like squash_whitespace, but don’t squash linefeeds and carriage returns
>>> squash_whitespace_not_nl(' linefeeds\ncarriage\r returns')
'linefeeds\ncarriage\r returns'
This is a list of podcast-related XML namespaces that are not yet supported by podcastparser, but might
be in the future.
CHAPTER MARKS
• rawvoice RSS: Rating, Frequency, Poster, WebM, MP4, Metamark (kind of chapter-like markers)
• IGOR: Chapter Marks
OTHERS
• libSYN RSS Extensions: contactPhone, contactEmail, contactTwitter, contactWebsite, wallpaper, pdf,
background
• Comment API: Comments to a given item (readable via RSS)
• MVCB: Error Reports To Field (usually a mailto: link)
• Syndication Module: Update period, frequency and base (for skipping updates)
• Creative Commons RSS: Creative commons license for the content
• Pheedo: Original link to website and original link to enclosure (without going through pheedo redirect)
• WGS84: Geo-Coordinates per item
• Conversations Network: Intro duration in milliseconds (for skipping the intro), ratings
• purl DC Elements: dc:creator (author / creator of the podcast, possibly with e-mail address)
• Tristana: tristana:self (canonical URL to feed)
• Blip: Show name, show page, picture, username, language, rating, thumbnail_src, license
• Index
• Module Index
• Search Page
AUTHOR
gPodder Team
COPYRIGHT
2023, gPodder Team
0.6.10 Jun 11, 2023 PODCASTPARSER(1)