Configuration

The XML file used in the configuration of Peapod can be a bit intimidating. This document aims to take you on a tour of the available options and what you can do with them. Lets start off with a simple example file.

<?xml version=’1.0′ encoding=’UTF-8′?>
<peapod>
<options>
<savedir>/home/huw/peapodcasts</savedir>
<mp3path>/tmp/mp3</mp3path>
<max_threads>3</max_threads>
<maxfetch>1</maxfetch>
<savestyle>date</savestyle>
<Genre>Podcast</Genre>
</options>

<feed>
<title>Evil Genius Chronicles</title>
<url>http://www.evilgeniuschronicles.org/wordpress/wp-rss2.php</url>
</feed>
<feed>
<title>IT Conversations</title>
<url>http://www.itconversations.com/rss/recentWithEnclosures.php</url>
<options>
<Album>IT Conversations</Album>
<maxfetch>2</maxfetch>
</options>
</feed>
</peapod>

Global Options

The first section between <options></options> is important. This sets up the global options. Some of these you might want to tweak.

For example <maxfetch> specifies how many new podcasts to download from a feed in one run. If a feed had five new podcasts and maxfetch is set to 1 you will only get one podcast and then no more until a new podcast appears on the feed. Setting maxfetch to 1 is usually sufficient if you run it once a day. If you run it more infrequently you might want to increase maxfetch.

<max_threads> tells peapod how many feeds to deal with at once. Three is a sensible default.

<Genre> this option is used by the ID3 tag re-writer. Because it’s in the global options list it tells Peapod to re-write the Genre tag in all the podcasts it downloads. I find this helpful to keep my music and my podcasts separate in the application I use to play them back.

<savestyle> peapod can store your downloaded podcasts in two layouts depending on what you put in here. “date” tells peapod to put podcasts into YY-MM-DD directories under sevedir. This is similar to how bashpodder operates. The other option is “feed” where peapod creates directories using the feed title you’ve configured. This option is good if you want to archive your podcasts since they are already organised by show.

Per-Feed Options

Everything between <feed> and </feed> pertains to a particular podcast feed. The two defaults are title and url. These are usually set up by using the –addnew command of Peapod. However you can also have an <options> section within a feed. These options over-ride the global options but only for this feed. If you take a look at my IT Conversations feed you can see that I have set <maxfetch> and <Album>. This feed quite often releases two podcasts a day so I have increased maxfetch so that I don’t miss anything. I also set Album because the default Album tag for IT Conversations is the event at which the recording was made. I find this quite confusing so I ask Peapod to re-write all IT Conversations shows to have an Album tag of “IT Conversations”.

Authenticated Feeds

Some RSS feeds (particularly those requiring a paid for subscription) ask for a username and password. You can access these sites using Peapod by adding your username and password into the feed url. For example:

<feed>
<title>Authenticated Feed</title>
<url>http://my_username:my_password@www.wantsmymoney.com/paidforfeed.xml</url>
</feed>
</peapod>

I hope this lets you get started configuring Peapod

2 Responses to “Configuration”

  1. Meandering thoughts » Blog Archive » Setting up peapod - a pod catcher Says:

    […] up on the very sparse document on configuration. Essentially you get a default config in ~/.peapod/peapod.xml after you run peapod the first […]

  2. mark Says:

    Now I’ll type it,

    Is there a,
    savestyle
    so all mp3′s go in the one directory?
    I don’t want date-based or feed-based directories.

    Will I get this by putting nothing between the savestyle tags?
    ???

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