Feed

Sample

The show feed is optimized for submission to the Apple Podcasts by adding additional Apple Podcast-specific tags.

The following is the direct output of a show feed following the RSS feed sample in the Podcasts Connect documentation as closely as possible.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<rss version="2.0" xmlns:itunes="http://www.itunes.com/dtds/podcast-1.0.dtd" xmlns:atom="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom">
    <channel>
        <title>All About Everything</title>
        <link>http://testserver/podcast/</link>
        <description>All About Everything is a show about everything. Each week we dive into any subject known to man and talk about it as much as we can. Look for our podcast in the Podcasts app or in the iTunes Store</description>
        <atom:link rel="self" href="http://testserver/podcast/feed/" />
        <language>en-us</language>
        <lastBuildDate>Thu, 10 Mar 2017 22:15:00 +0000</lastBuildDate>
        <copyright>&#x2117; &amp; &#xA9; 2017 John Doe &amp; Family</copyright>
        <itunes:subtitle><![CDATA[A show about everything]]></itunes:subtitle>
        <itunes:summary><![CDATA[All About Everything is a show about everything. Each week we dive into any subject known to man and talk about it as much as we can. Look for our podcast in the Podcasts app or in the iTunes Store]]></itunes:summary>
        <itunes:author>John Doe</itunes:author>
        <itunes:owner>
            <itunes:name>John Doe</itunes:name>
            <itunes:email>john.doe@example.com</itunes:email>
        </itunes:owner>
        <itunes:image href="http://testserver/podcast/tests/static/everything/AllAboutEverything.jpg" />
        <itunes:category text="Arts">
            <itunes:category text="Food" />
        </itunes:category>
        <itunes:category text="TV &amp; Film" />
        <itunes:category text="Technology">
            <itunes:category text="Gadgets" />
        </itunes:category>
        <itunes:explicit>no</itunes:explicit>
        <item>
            <title>Red,Whine, &amp; Blue</title>
            <link>http://testserver/podcast/red-whine-blue/</link>
            <description>This week we talk about surviving in a Red state if you are a Blue person. Or vice versa.</description>
            <pubDate>Thu, 10 Mar 2016 22:15:00 +0000</pubDate>
            <guid>http://testserver/podcast/tests/static/everything/AllAboutEverythingEpisode4.mp3</guid>
            <enclosure length="75232" type="audio/mpeg" url="http://testserver/podcast/tests/static/everything/AllAboutEverythingEpisode4.mp3" />
            <itunes:subtitle><![CDATA[Red + Blue != Purple]]></itunes:subtitle>
            <itunes:summary><![CDATA[This week we talk about surviving in a Red state if you are a Blue person. Or vice versa.]]></itunes:summary>
            <itunes:author>Various</itunes:author>
            <itunes:image href="http://testserver/podcast/tests/static/everything/AllAboutEverything/Episode4.jpg" />
            <itunes:explicit>no</itunes:explicit>
            <itunes:duration>00:03</itunes:duration>
        </item>
        <item>
            <title>The Best Chili</title>
            <link>http://testserver/podcast/best-chili/</link>
            <description>This week we talk about the best Chili in the world. Which chili is better?</description>
            <pubDate>Thu, 10 Mar 2016 09:00:00 +0000</pubDate>
            <guid>http://testserver/podcast/tests/static/everything/AllAboutEverythingEpisode2.m4v</guid>
            <enclosure length="25725" type="video/x-m4v" url="http://testserver/podcast/tests/static/everything/AllAboutEverythingEpisode2.m4v" />
            <itunes:subtitle><![CDATA[Jane and Eric]]></itunes:subtitle>
            <itunes:summary><![CDATA[This week we talk about the best Chili in the world. Which chili is better?]]></itunes:summary>
            <itunes:author>Jane Doe</itunes:author>
            <itunes:image href="http://testserver/podcast/tests/static/everything/AllAboutEverything/Episode3.jpg" />
            <itunes:explicit>no</itunes:explicit>
            <itunes:duration>00:02</itunes:duration>
            <itunes:isClosedCaptioned>yes</itunes:isClosedCaptioned>
        </item>
        <item>
            <title>Socket Wrench Shootout</title>
            <link>http://testserver/podcast/socket-wrench-shootout/</link>
            <description>This week we talk about metric vs. Old English socket wrenches. Which one is better? Do you really need both? Get all of your answers here.</description>
            <pubDate>Wed, 09 Mar 2016 18:00:00 +0000</pubDate>
            <guid>http://testserver/podcast/tests/static/everything/AllAboutEverythingEpisode2.mp4</guid>
            <enclosure length="28355" type="video/mp4" url="http://testserver/podcast/tests/static/everything/AllAboutEverythingEpisode2.mp4" />
            <itunes:subtitle><![CDATA[Comparing socket wrenches is fun!]]></itunes:subtitle>
            <itunes:summary><![CDATA[This week we talk about metric vs. Old English socket wrenches. Which one is better? Do you really need both? Get all of your answers here.]]></itunes:summary>
            <itunes:author>Jane Doe</itunes:author>
            <itunes:image href="http://testserver/podcast/tests/static/everything/AllAboutEverything/Episode2.jpg" />
            <itunes:explicit>no</itunes:explicit>
            <itunes:duration>00:03</itunes:duration>
        </item>
        <item>
            <title>Shake Shake Shake Your Spices</title>
            <link>http://testserver/podcast/shake-shake-shake-your-spices/</link>
            <description>This week we talk about &lt;a href="https://itunes/apple.com/us/book/antique-trader-salt-pepper/id429691295?mt=11"&gt;salt and pepper shakers&lt;/a&gt;, comparing and contrasting pour rates, construction materials, and overall aesthetics. Come and join the party!</description>
            <pubDate>Tue, 08 Mar 2016 12:00:00 +0000</pubDate>
            <guid>http://testserver/podcast/tests/static/everything/AllAboutEverythingEpisode3.m4a</guid>
            <enclosure length="46862" type="audio/x-m4a" url="http://testserver/podcast/tests/static/everything/AllAboutEverythingEpisode3.m4a" />
            <itunes:subtitle><![CDATA[A short primer on table spices]]></itunes:subtitle>
            <itunes:summary><![CDATA[This week we talk about <a href="https://itunes/apple.com/us/book/antique-trader-salt-pepper/id429691295?mt=11">salt and pepper shakers</a>, comparing and contrasting pour rates, construction materials, and overall aesthetics. Come and join the party!]]></itunes:summary>
            <itunes:author>John Doe</itunes:author>
            <itunes:image href="http://testserver/podcast/tests/static/everything/AllAboutEverything/Episode1.jpg" />
            <itunes:explicit>no</itunes:explicit>
            <itunes:duration>00:03</itunes:duration>
        </item>
    </channel>
</rss>

Sample differences

Although every effort was made to recreate the RSS feed sample on Podcasts Connnect as closely as possible, the limitations of the way in which Django creates feeds and the occassional stray error in the feed sample itself required small changes:

  • The RssFeed class in Django’s deep syndication class hierarchy adds an <atom:link> to the <channel> element that would require a significant code duplication and rewrite to eliminate. It does not affect Apple Podcasts compatibility and thus remains in the show feed.
  • The <atom:link> previously mentioned can only exist in a correponding XML namespace; i.e. the attribute xmlns:atom="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom" in the <rss> element. The attribute could be easily removed, but would prevent the feed from achieving XML validation. The Atom XML namespace thus remains in the show feed.
  • The RssFeed class adds a <lastBuildDate> to the <channel> element that corresponds to the <pubDate> of the latest <item>. Due to Django’s deep syndication class hierarchy, it remains in the show feed.
  • In the RSS feed sample, the <copyright> element contains a year of 2014. The sample is replaced with the current year, at the time of this writing, 2017.
  • In the RSS feed sample, <itunes:summary> tag in the “Shake Shake Shake Your Spices” episode has an errant space in its <![CDATA[...]]> tag. The sample displays <![CDATA[...]] >. The show feed removes the errant space.
  • In the RSS feed sample, the domain in URLs is www.example.com or example.com. Django’s testing framework uses the server name testserver. The feed test replaces www.example.com with testserver.
  • In the RSS feed sample, the absolute URL of the show is /podcasts/everything/index.html. In the interest of clean URLs, the feed test removes index.html.
  • In the RSS feed sample, only instances of <itunes:summary> or <itunes:subtitle> that have HTML contain <![CDATA[...]]> tags to escape the HTML. Rather than conditionally insert <![CDATA[...]]> tags, they are inserted in all instances of <itunes:summary> and <itunes:subtitle>.
  • In the RSS feed sample, the enclosure url of an <item> is often different from the <guid>, e.g. http://example.com/podcasts/everything/AllAboutEverythingEpisode3.m4a vs. http://example.com/podcasts/archive/aae20140615.m4a. The <guid> of an <item> is normalized to return the enclosure URL and eliminate a competing, arbitrary URL.
  • In the RSS feed sample, the (fake) enclosure files have accompanying fake values in <itunes:duration> elements. The app automatically reads the duration of media files using the Python Mutagen package, and their durations are not subject to manual editing.
  • In the RSS feed sample, the enclosure length of an <item> is similarly determined by automatically reading the enclosure size of the file.
  • In the RSS feed sample, the paths to media files were changed to reflect a more typical Django file path.
  • In the RSS feed sample, <item> elements omit <link> and <description> elements. While technically valid, Django encourages its use by automatically querying for an item’s absolute URL, and thus each item’s <link> and <description> are preserved.
  • In the RSS feed sample, the <item> elements contain <pubDate> values whose time zones are inconsistent: GMT (which is obsolete), EST, -0700, and +3000 (which should be +0300). Because Django defines TIME_ZONE at the project level in settings, it’s impossible to display datetimes in the show feed with different time zones. For example, given a datetime 2016-03-11T01:15:00+0300 (which might be, say, 'Europe/Moscow'), a setting of TIME_ZONE = 'UTC' would ultimately result in a display of Thu, 10 Mar 2016 22:15:00 +0000, that is, moving three hours backward to achieve UTC, which would be around 10 p.m. the prior evening. All values of <pubDate> elements have been converted to their UTC-time zone equivalents.
  • In the RSS feed sample, elements that correspond to boolean values are inconsistently capitalized. The values of <itunes:explicit> elements are no, but the value of <itunes:isClosedCaptioned> is Yes. The sample was changed to yes.
  • In the RSS feed, the episode “Shake Shake Shake Your Spices” has a <description> and <itunes:summary> element whose value contains a malformed URL, i.e. https://itunes/apple.com. The error has been preserved.
  • In the RSS feed, the episode “Red,Whine, & Blue” is missing a space after the first comma. The error has been preserved.
  • The show feed and RSS feed sample only compare semantic differences, i.e. parsed content, and not syntax differences, i.e. various orderings of elements, capitialization, orderings of attributes, and spaces, etc. Django’s assertXMLEqual is used to assert equality.