Python - Create RSS / Podcast of MP3 files

Anyway, a nice guy called Dan Goff left a comment on my post about creating a RSS / podcast file using Python letting me know that he had taken my code template and modified it to use the Mutagen library to pick up certain values from the ID3 tags inside MP3 files.

Dan says:

• I'm populating the title for each entry and the description directly from the ID3 tags provided using the Mutagen library.
• I ran into an issue with my podcatching software, because the files are only tagged with the year and not a full date, so part of the code is to take a fully-formatted date string and write it back to the file so that it is listed correctly when my software "downloads" the file from the feed.
• Also, I ran into an issue with some Unicode characters in the description (mostly an ellipsis), so I took the quick-and-dirty (and probably not exactly correct) route and just converted everything in the description field to ASCII before writing it out to the feed.

Dan has also kindly agreed to let me share his code:

 

# update environment to handle Unicode
PYTHONIOENCODING="utf-8"

# import libraries
import os
import sys
import datetime
import time


# import constants from stat library
from stat import * # ST_SIZE ST_MTIME

# import ID3 tag reader
from mutagen.id3 import ID3, ID3TimeStamp, TDRC
from time import strptime, strftime

# format date method
def formatDate(dt):
    return dt.strftime("%a, %d %b %Y %H:%M:%S +0000")


# get the item/@type based on file extension
def getItemType(fileExtension):
    if fileExtension == "aac":
         mediaType = "audio/mpeg"
    elif fileExtension == "mp4":
         mediaType = "video/mpeg"
    else:
         mediaType = "audio/mpeg"
    return mediaType


# constants
# the podcast name
rssTitle = "The podcast title"
# the podcast description
rssDescription = "The podcast description"
# the url where the podcast items will be hosted
rssSiteURL = http://xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx
# the url of the folder where the items will be stored
rssItemURL = rssSiteURL + "/Podcasts"
# the url to the podcast html file
rssLink = rssSiteURL #+ ""
# url to the podcast image
rssImageUrl = rssSiteURL #+ "/logo.jpg"
# the time to live (in minutes)
rssTtl = "60"
# contact details of the web master
rssWebMaster = "me@me.com"


#record datetime started
now = datetime.datetime.now()


# command line options
#    - python createRSFeed.py /path/to/podcast/files /path/to/output/rss
# directory passed in
rootdir = sys.argv[1]
# output RSS filename
outputFilename = sys.argv[2]


# Main program

# open rss file
outputFile = open(outputFilename, "w")


# write rss header
outputFile.write("<?xml version=\"1.0\" encoding=\"UTF-8\" ?>\n")
outputFile.write("<rss version=\"2.0\">\n")
outputFile.write("<channel>\n")
outputFile.write("<title>" + rssTitle + "</title>\n")
outputFile.write("<description>" + rssDescription + "</description>\n")
outputFile.write("<link>" + rssLink + "</link>\n")
outputFile.write("<ttl>" + rssTtl + "</ttl>\n")
outputFile.write("<image><url>" + rssImageUrl + "</url><title>" + rssTitle + "</title><link>" + rssLink + "</link></image>\n")
outputFile.write("<copyright>mart 2012</copyright>\n")
outputFile.write("<lastBuildDate>" + formatDate(now) + "</lastBuildDate>\n")
outputFile.write("<pubDate>" + formatDate(now) + "</pubDate>\n")
outputFile.write("<webMaster>" + rssWebMaster + "</webMaster>\n")


# walk through all files and subfolders
for path, subFolders, files in os.walk(rootdir):
   
    for file in files:
 
        # split the file based on "." we use the first part as the title and the extension to work out the media type
        fileNameBits = file.split(".")
        # get the full path of the file
        fullPath = os.path.join(path, file)
        # get the stats for the file
        fileStat = os.stat(fullPath)
        # find the path relative to the starting folder, e.g. /subFolder/file
        relativePath = fullPath[len(rootdir):]

      # Extract ID3 info
      #title
      audio = ID3(fullPath)
      fileTitle = audio["TIT2"].text[0]
      #date
      datePos = fileTitle.find(":")
      fileDate = fileTitle[(datePos+2):]
      fileDate = time.strptime(fileDate, "%B %d, %Y")
      #correct date format in the file's ID3 tag
      fileTS = ID3TimeStamp(time.strftime("%Y-%m-%d", fileDate))
      audio['TDRC'] = TDRC(0, [fileTS])
      #description
      fileDesc = audio["COMM::'eng'"].text[0]
      fileDesc = fileDesc.encode('ascii', 'ignore') #converts everything to ASCII prior to writing out
      audio.save()

        # write rss item
        outputFile.write("<item>\n")
        #outputFile.write("<title>" + fileNameBits[0].replace("_", " ") + "</title>\n")
      outputFile.write("<title>" + fileTitle + "</title>\n")
        #outputFile.write("<description>A description</description>\n")
        outputFile.write("<description>" + fileDesc + "</description>\n")
        outputFile.write("<link>" + rssItemURL + relativePath + "</link>\n")
        outputFile.write("<guid>" + rssItemURL + relativePath + "</guid>\n")
        #outputFile.write("<pubDate>" + formatDate(datetime.datetime.fromtimestamp(fileStat[ST_MTIME])) + "</pubDate>\n")
      outputFile.write("<pubDate>" + time.strftime("%Y-%m-%d", fileDate) + "</pubDate>\n")
        outputFile.write("<enclosure url=\"" + rssItemURL + relativePath + "\" length=\"" + str(fileStat[ST_SIZE]) + "\" type=\"" + getItemType(fileNameBits[len(fileNameBits)-1]) + "\" />\n")
        outputFile.write("</item>\n")

       
# write rss footer
outputFile.write("</channel>\n")
outputFile.write("</rss>")
outputFile.close()
print "complete"
 

Thanks again to Dan.