This is a simple thing that adds a few radius tags and makes it very simple to serve podcast feeds. We also have a very similar rss_page extension but I've kept this separate because it requires some faff to get a more up to date RSS library.
The extension offers two ways to create a podcast: from the audio and video assets attached to a page, or from whatever audio and video it can find in a collection of pages (ie your blog, probably). The resulting feeds are itunes-compatible.
The extension also adds a 'podcast' page type, which forces the right layout and labels your page nicely in the tree, but doesn't do much else. You can use the podcast tags in any page.
If you install the reader extension then the podcasts can be subject to access control like any other page.
New but simple: should just work. No tests yet.
- Paperclipped, to attach media files and images to the page.
- Ruby RSS library 0.1.8 or later to get the itunes tags. For most people this will probably mean updating the core library. See this blog entry for details (and a comment lower down from the author of the Parser that was very useful).
If anyone knows a better way to get the latest RSS library I'd love to hear it.
This works fine with multi_site. If it's installed, we derive link urls from Page.current_site. If not, we need a site.url in Radiant::Config.
Should be straightforward:
git submodule add git://github.com/spanner/radiant-podcast_page-extension.git vendor/extensions/podcast_page
rake radiant:extensions:podcast_page:migrate
The migration will add a 'podcast' layout and an 'itunes' thumbnail size, unless you already have them. There are no database changes.
There are no settings for the podcast extension itself but if multi_site is not installed we need a site.url. You may also want to look at assets.max_asset_size.
<r:podcast from="assets" />
To create a standalone podcast, all you need is a page with a bunch of audio and video files attached to it. You can order the assets, give them captions and upload new ones in the usual way: the podcast will be updated. The first image asset will be used as cover art.
<r:podcast from="children" />
Here we scan all the child pages of a given root page looking for images and audio files. The sequence is determined by page-publication order (unless you specify otherwise) and we draw on the pages for captioning and metadata.
Upload an image to the podcast page and it will appear as the cover artwork. I'm looking for the right way to do the same for individual tracks within the podcast. The migrations for this extension will add an itunes thumbnail size to your paperclipped configuration. It's supposed to be square and larger than 600x600 so I've been using 1024x1024#.
On the server side we don't care about encodings: it's all just files with mime types and as long as we think it's audio or video, we'll pass it through without any checking. Your readers will need to be able to see or hear it, though. See the Apple podcast documentation for some tips.
Itunes indexes the title, author, summary and keywords of the feed. It doesn't index episode text so if you care about itunes searches you need to get the metadata right. Unless you specify otherwise:
- the 'title' of the feed will be the title of the page
- the 'author' of the feed will be the full name of the author of the page
- the 'description' and 'itunes_summary' of the feed will be taken from the enclosed text if any, else from a 'description' page part.
- the 'keywords' of the feed will be the keywords of the page it's on
You can override any of these with parameters to the r:podcast tag. Other options you can also pass in:
- category (as category/subcategory/mycategory. default is none)
- language (default is en-US)
- copyright (default is blank)
- subtitle (default is same as description)
- image (default is none)
- explicit (default is "No")
A 'podcast' layout is created for you when you run rake radiant:extensions:podcast:migrate. All it does is set the right content_type (application/rss+xml) and render the page. Create a page with that layout, and in the body:
<r:podcast />
And then attach some audio files. Job is done. Or:
<r:podcast from="children" />
and then give it some children and give those some audio files. That's it, really. You can also:
- Give each page a description part, and that text will go into the description of your feed (and the itunes summary) and tracks.
- Attach an image asset to the podcast page, and that will become the cover artwork.
If you want to turn an existing blog or other set of pages into a podcast, this should be all you need:
<r:find url="/blog"><r:podcast from="children" /></r:find>
Or maybe:
<r:find url="/blog"><r:podcast
from="children"
title="alert the authorities: my podcast is ready"
link="site url/blog"
subtitle="Don't panic"
/>
</r:find>
Note that you don't really want white space at the top of your feed, so it's best not to leave any between the tags.
Any audio files that you've attached to any child of your blog page will be drawn into the feed and ordered by the publication date of the blog entries.
William Ross, for spanner. will at spanner.org Copyright 2009 spanner ltd Released under the same terms as Rails and/or Radiant