NPR Grab

[mbierman]

NPR Grab

I wanted to share a new workflow I made because I learned a lot by doing it and even if you don't care about this task, it might help others learn some cool tricks.

What is it?

Self contained workflow to download NPR shows, All Things Considered, Morning Edition, Weekend Edition Saturday/ Sunday.

What does it do?

Downloads entire show, zip, and exports to an app (I use File Hub). Can be used stand alone to get today’s show or as an extension to get an arbitrary date via browser.

Key Workflow features

I used some Workflow features that I hadn’t used before in this workflow that I thought were really interesting:

1. Find the right URLs from the web site with filters, save them as a variable and zip all of the MP3s for a show together for export to another app.

2. Set the name of a downloaded file (which was different than the name as downloaded and added a counter as a file prefix so the files appear in order in the app once exported.

3. Encoding an image and saving it to a zip file along with the MP3s so that there would be a folder icon in the receiving app. Note, originally I was storing the image in my device photo gallery and retrieving it through a query but that was so fragile this is much better and more portable.

4. Set a timer to show how long the entire process took and how many segments are included in each show.

I can't thank the people at Workflow enough--it is an awesome tool that I use every day for a bunch of things. A also submitted to the Gallery--but other times I submitted things I got no response so I don't know if it will ever show up there.

Link: https://workflow.is/workflows/78e1aba7a9024952b49b3faa58ebb23b

Updated version fixed bugs: https://workflow.is/workflows/a82bfb567e3f42fab52f077f0280b46b

[mbierman]

Updated version.

https://workflow.is/workflows/f1eac6c59d094be2acb8c74ae0847f9b