By Treesong on

I just installed the audio module and the playlist module. These modules worked so nicely that I decided to transfer my pre-existing podcast to drupal. However, now that I have everything transferred, I noticed that the RSS feed created by the playlist module is confusing to RSS readers. I've tried subscribing to it through iTunes and Google Reader, but neither one has been able to read the RSS file properly. iTunes can only pick up the podcast title, and Google Reader picks up the title and details of each episode, but rather than linking to the audio file itself, it links to the node page, which means that it doesn't let you listen to the audio like it should.

Here's the link to my playlist, followed by the link to my RSS podcast feed:

http://treesong.org/yourcommunityspirit/?q=node/3
http://treesong.org/yourcommunityspirit/?q=node/3/podcast

At first, I couldn't figure out why it wasn't working. Now, upon further review, I think it may have something to do with the fact that I don't have "clean URLs" enabled. (Dumb hosting at GoDaddy.) Is it possible that iTunes etc. reject an enclosure's URL if it's got ?'s in it? Another possibility that comes to mind is that the makers of the module have formatted the RSS improperly. But it looks okay to me. To be honest, I'm kinda mystified as to why it's not working. The internal workings of the modules themselves are pretty smooth, but none of the readers seem to like the RSS feed.

Any ideas on how to remedy the situation?

⋅ Categories: Drupal 4.7.x

Comments

khoogheem’s picture

khoogheem commented

Here is one thing I notice..

looking at a feed that works in iTunes and the feed playlist is outputing for you.

the enclosure url is not setting the type field. where it should be something like audio/mpeg.

the other thing that looks like it is missing info and will cause the ITMS not to show your podcast is the tag

Treesong’s picture

Treesong commented

Thanks for the input. Yeah, it's weird that playlist didn't put the encoding type. I tried putting that in manually, though, and it didn't seem to help.

You mentioned that it was missing a tag. What tag is it missing? Hopefully that's the problem since it's the only other option on the table...

Any other ideas out there?

Treesong’s picture

Treesong commented

Okay... I went to http://www.feedvalidator.org/ and ran my playlist-module-generated feed through the validator. It got really frustrated with the feed... :) Here's what it found:

Sorry

This feed does not validate.

      line 8, column 1078: width must be between 1 and 144: 300 [help]

... ityspirit/audio/wdbx.jpg</url><width>300</width><height>300</height></im ...
                                             ^

      line 8, column 1106: Missing image element: title [help]

... l><width>300</width><height>300</height></image><item> 
                                             ^

      line 8, column 1106: Missing image element: link [help]

... l><width>300</width><height>300</height></image><item> 
                                             ^

      line 17, column 68: comments must be a full and valid URL: uploaded by at http://treesong.org/yourcommunityspirit (18 occurrences) [help]

  <comments> uploaded by  at http://treesong.org/yourcommunityspirit</commen ...
                                                                    ^

      line 18, column 2: type attribute of enclosure must be a valid MIME type (18 occurrences) [help]

  <enclosure url="http://treesong.org/yourcommunityspirit/?q=audio/download/ ...
  ^

In addition, this feed has issues that may cause problems for some users. We recommend fixing these issues.


      line 15, column 2: Avoid content:encoded (18 occurrences) [help]

  <content:encoded>Cheney's still got his gun, and Bush achieves the end of  ...
  ^

      line 107, column 588: itunes:summary should not contain HTML: During the second chunk of this special 1.5 hour broadcast, Aur and Treesong continue talking about permaculture, then move on to the news. News includes spoof article on Bush&apos;s global warming stance; Seattle aims for Kyoto goals; edgy TV ads dramatize threat of climate change to children; top 10 places to live during oil crisis; agriculture interests push renewables; ethanol production powered by coal; global warming makes Time cover story; and major conservation in the South. (2 occurrences) [help]

... ry; and major conservation in the South.</itunes:summary> 
                                             ^

      line 278, column 0: Missing recommended iTunes channel element: itunes:category [help]

</channel>

So, I'm going to play with it and see if I can find which error(s) I need to fix. For future reference, though, where do I submit this info to the playlist module development process so that they can fix these errors (or tell me what I'm doing wrong if it is indeed somehow user error)?

zirafa’s picture

zirafa commented

Hi, I am the maintainer of the playlist module. You can submit bug reports using the issue tracker on drupal.org. It's the best way to get your feedback to developers. The podcast validation is some finicky business. For your reference, I've been using this feed checker for checking my podcasts. They seem to validate properly IF:

  • Each audio file has all metadata fields filled out.
  • The image is exactly 300x300 pixels.
  • Taxonomy/categories are assigned and associated with the playlist and audio content types. These are used for the keyword and category tags automatically.

It's been really frustrating trying to get podcasts to validate in all validators. Seeing as how podcasts are really Standard RSS 2.0 feeds with the itunes: namespace, it shouldn't be so finicky. Any help will be appreciated, however. Thanks!

Even without all the info entered, your podcast should still work - it conforms to Standard RSS 2.0. Most likely the non-clean urls are failing in iTunes and it can't find the mp3s as specified.

Farsheed

Treesong’s picture

Treesong commented

Okay... after extensive experimentation, I've determined that iTunes does in fact reject audio file names with a "?" in them. Therefore, the RSS errors cited above may or may not be inhibiting the podcasting process. I'll do some more experimentation and let you know.

khoogheem’s picture

khoogheem commented

I have a rss feed that looks like :

www.blahblahblah.com/some.php?file=podsafe.xml

and it shows up in the iTunes directory.

The best way to see if apple will allow your feed is to just take iTunes and subscribe to it under the Advance menu > subscribe podcast.

drew777’s picture

drew777 commented

No, this is true. I spent countless hours trying to figure out why my podcasts would not work in iTunes and it was the "?" in the URL. Once I tweaked IIS (using ISAPI_rewrite) to use clean URLs all worked well. You can verify this by taking any rss file and tweaking the enclosure tag's URL by adding a "?" somewhere. iTunes will tell you there is no audio content in the feed.

zirafa’s picture

zirafa commented

I believe iTunes does not accept mp3 files with query URLs (?q=). See the entire iTunes spec here:

http://www.apple.com/itunes/podcasts/techspecs.html

khoogheem’s picture

khoogheem commented

ya.. the mp3 files have to be /file.mp3 and everything after a ? is ignored.

but the feed can have a ? in it.

JenM’s picture

JenM commented

I was experiencing the exact same problems! After reading this tread, I checked my settings and realized that I had clean URL's disabled under Admin / settings / general settings which was preventing my audio from appearing in iTunes. As soon as I changed it to "enable", iTunes picked it up immediately. Thanks for pointing me on the right track!