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Sat, 14 Aug 2021 20:14:45 +0200

adminsforum@hubzilla.org

RockyIII wrote the following post Sat, 14 Aug 2021 20:14:42 +0200

HZ RSS feeds for Podcatchers ?

I get more interested in audio podcasts and thinking of using HZ to pull feeds and share episodes i like.

Pulling audio podcast feeds works just fine and sharing as a HZ post does also work like cream...

Now it would be super cool if the RSS feed of the HZ Channel could be also read by a podcatcher app but this does not work at the moment right. Some how the HZ RSS feeds are not workings right so that it is not possible to stream and download the linked audio media files.

I would like to ask if it is a big deal to change the way how HZ builds the feeds in order to make it compatible to Podcaster apps.

THANKS

show all 16 comments

Sat, 14 Aug 2021 21:40:50 +0200

hEARt PhoniX

tobias@hubzilla.rocks

Yeah.
Been thinking about turning HZ into a personal podcast vault for years. Not it seems it may soon become a necessity, unless I want to write the feed by hand.

Sat, 14 Aug 2021 23:51:59 +0200

RockyIII

rocky3@im.allmendenetz.de

Podcast is cool on mobile devices with #AntennaPod... a HZ RSS feed which does offer a download and streaming link for Podcatchers like #AntennaPod would be really great... and Hz could become a wanted forum tool for all those Podcast lovers... there is some potential ...

I have no idea why the HZ feeds right now are not working... maybe is is just a little thing which is missing - does anybody know?

Sun, 15 Aug 2021 11:58:14 +0200

RockyIII

rocky3@im.allmendenetz.de

to get all features of a podcast feed working may be hard to task... but basic features like working links for download and streaming would be great...

for more complex features there are specialist apps:

@hEARt PhoniX do know castopod ?
https://podlibre.org/tag/castopod-host/
https://code.podlibre.org/podlibre/castopod-host/-/releases
this seams to me a very promising project which is also connected with the fedivers

Sun, 15 Aug 2021 18:09:42 +0200

hEARt PhoniX

tobias@hubzilla.rocks

@RockyIII No, I have not yet heard of it.
I have had a quick look to at least identify some places where I would need to look more deeply.

boot.php defines the namespace
define ( 'NAMESPACE_ATOM1', 'http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom' );

but the main lifting seems to get done in
include/feedutils.php
But getting a remote idea what is being done there ... it's no easy peasy task for me.

I had a look at the rss feed for my channel and found that I may like to also not include comments, which does happen, including likes. That just clutters the feed IMO and I'd like to filter that out. Somehow. If only I knew how.
Well, we will see how far I will get. This is a task that is at least interesting and I do want it done.

But I have found an answer to a question I had: What does the "censor" option mean in the admin interface for channels?

define ( 'PAGE_CENSORED',          0x0040 ); // Site admin has blocked this channel from appearing in casual search results and site feeds

Mon, 16 Aug 2021 15:14:26 +0200

RockyIII

rocky3@im.allmendenetz.de

#castopod is an new FLOSS audio hosting platform (a bit link Funkwhale) but more specialized for hosting podcasts - it creates for uploaded audio files complex RSS/Atom feed with all this special tags which are compatible to standards set by Apple &Co... this way you can spread your files and links to all kind of Podcast plattfroms if you wish... castopod is still alfa but already connected to the Fediverse.

#AntennaPod is an FLOSS android podcatcher which can read ATOM and RSS feeds (#^https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AntennaPod) . It would be great if HZ ATOM channel feeds could be read by AntennaPod so linked audio files could be easy streamed and downloaded on mobile devises

Mon, 16 Aug 2021 22:14:22 +0200

RockyIII

rocky3@im.allmendenetz.de

with my little knowledge I did some research- correct me if i´m all wrong please -

according to this post https://github.com/AntennaPod/AntennaPod/issues/193

AntennaPod can deal with multiple enclosures.

according to this post https://github.com/AntennaPod/AntennaPod/issues/3143

the "enclosure" Tag is needed for a working Podcast feed

The enclosure Tag is part of the ATOM specification

https://validator.w3.org/feed/docs/atom.html

but I can´t find the enclosure Tag in HZ feeds

Tue, 17 Aug 2021 00:42:57 +0200

oRx-Qx pirateradio

michal@node9.org

@RockyIII in feedutils.php every feed item is rendered out in atom_entry function

enclosures are made from post attachments obviously:

if($item['attach']) {
        $enclosures = json_decode($item['attach'], true);
        if($enclosures) {
            foreach($enclosures as $enc) {
                $o .= '<link rel="enclosure" '
                . (($enc['href']) ? 'href="' . $enc['href'] . '" ' : '')
                . (($enc['length']) ? 'length="' . $enc['length'] . '" ' : '')
                . (($enc['type']) ? 'type="' . $enc['type'] . '" ' : '')
                . ' />' . "\r\n";
            }
        }
    }

Tue, 17 Aug 2021 09:17:44 +0200

RockyIII

rocky3@im.allmendenetz.de

strange ... hz does not show the code right... i wanted to say is has to look like this:

Tue, 17 Aug 2021 19:03:42 +0200

hEARt PhoniX

tobias@hubzilla.rocks

Phew. Yet another unexpected mess.
The problem is: who does support it already? A quick search in connection with "podcast" brought ... nothing.
Which services support it already? This will be important as many podcasters want to syndicate to those services. It's a true mess.
Though someone may have to adopt early ...

Tue, 17 Aug 2021 22:08:45 +0200

RockyIII

rocky3@im.allmendenetz.de

Feature request for JSONFeeds
#^https://github.com/AntennaPod/AntennaPod/issues/4449

RSS rules in the podcast world but probably a good site to place Mikes thoughts are here:
https://github.com/Podcastindex-org/podcast-namespace

If the guys form Podcastindex.org catch fire ATOM/JSON Feeds could get a better chance...

So really the best way to do this is to provide a separate RSS V2 feed as I suggested in my prior comment, and restrict it to one enclosure; because multiple enclosures aren't actually legal in RSS V2.

meanwhile this could be a ZOT podcastaddon for HZ/Zap Podcast channels - if enabled an extra rss v2 feed is activated :-)

Wed, 18 Aug 2021 08:49:45 +0200

Mario Vavti

mario@hub.somaton.com

In fact AntennaPod works quite well with the Hubzilla feed.

Wed, 18 Aug 2021 11:56:17 +0200

Mario Vavti

mario@hub.somaton.com

@RockyIII

The Atom link enclosures does just work in HZ with attachments , right?

That is what I tested.

If it works with other sourced feeds, depends on if the sourced feed is sending the data correctly and if Hubzilla is dealing with the data correctly. Both will require some investigation i am afraid...

Wed, 18 Aug 2021 19:33:22 +0200

RockyIII

rocky3@im.allmendenetz.de

Issue filed:
https://github.com/Podcastindex-org/podcast-namespace/issues/284

Wed, 18 Aug 2021 21:05:29 +0200

hEARt PhoniX

tobias@hubzilla.rocks

@RockyIII

I am doing more research on current podcasting best practices as they are being lived right now to get an idea of the current requirements. 15 years ago I have written my own feed file manually, so ... I have got quite some catching up to do.

Can you still edit the post you created? I suggest adding some resources that may indicate that it is not just another format but a successor supported by W3C.

I suggest implementing ActivityStreams JSON-LD as a future oriented feed format. RSS was superseded by Atom and Atom is being superseded by ActivityStreams.

#^https://www.w3.org/TR/activitystreams-core/
#^https://www.w3.org/wiki/Activity_Streams

Definition
(...)
Big "A" Activity Streams : is a data format for encoding and transferring activity/event metadata. The first version of the specification was published in 2011 by the independent Activity Streams Working Group and is based on extending Atom. The current (2.0+) version of the spec is JSON-based.

Thu, 19 Aug 2021 08:57:13 +0200

RockyIII

rocky3@im.allmendenetz.de

This was discussed ad nauseam for many years - the JSON versus RSS debate. It was even tried with the JSONfeed format, which went nowhere.

The reason ultimately boils down to interoperability during the transition phase. There will always be an indeterminate amount of time in which both the old and the new formats need to function. So during that time all publishers would have to produce two different feed formats instead of one. This transition time could last many years, and most likely would never fully resolve.

There would always be some unknown percentage of publishing software out there still producing RSS format which results in consuming applications having to also add support for both formats.

Ultimately there’s just no way to make the transition in a decentralized system that doesn’t result in two formats being imposed. Therefore nobody takes the first step since they don’t want that hassle either.

JSON is better than RSS in a lot of ways. But it’s not enough better to justify the pain of the transition.

https://github.com/Podcastindex-org/podcast-namespace/issues/284#issuecomment-901570879

Thu, 19 Aug 2021 12:11:15 +0200

RockyIII

rocky3@im.allmendenetz.de

This came up day one on PodcastIndex and @daveajones has been dealing with RSS probably longer than almost anyone. This is one of those fights that's just not worth the effort when there are so many other things we can put the scarce resources into.

Pick anything else to promote, switching the base layer protocol at this point would be like trying to re-write the rules of Bitcoin and get everyone to agree next week. Only a little bit harder in this case as there isn't even a method to ASK people if they want to do this and it would break every single part of the ecosystem just as that ecosystem is trying to grow out from the shadow it got put in by the centralised Internet giants.

https://github.com/Podcastindex-org/podcast-namespace/issues/284#issuecomment-901734862