Codewut Because Software Matters

X-Mas time...
I just got my wife a nice WiFi Radio (yes, she does not give a sh** about this blog). She loves to listen to internet radio stations so it seemed like a cool gift. We'll know for sure in less than 4 days.

Anyway. I unwrapped it to make sure it works and to preinitialize it with some presets she likes. But wait! What about my presets? Yes, I love to listen to podcasts. While the device itself has some support for RSS feeds (browsing my genre, country etc.) - it won't allow adding a RSS feed to your favorites / bookmarks. Here it will only accept playlists.  

A minor inconvenience you can fix with some PHP and SimplePie. Here is a small script which will convert any arbitrary RSS Feed to a PLS ... well, playlist :)

<?php  
  require_once("simplepie.inc");
 
  function getFeedItems($rss, $numberOfFeedItemsToFetch = 50)
  {
    $feed = new SimplePie($rss);
    $feed->init();
    $feed->handle_content_type();
    if ($feed->error()) die ($feed->error()); 
    return $feed->get_items(0,$numberOfFeedItemsToFetch);
  }
 
  $url = urldecode($_GET["url"]);
  $numEntries= $_GET["numEntries"];
  if (!$numEntries) $numEntries=50;
  if (!$url) $url = "http://feeds.feedburner.com/cnet/buzzoutloud?tag=rtcol";
  $items = getFeedItems($url,$numEntries);
  $plsItems = array();
  foreach($items as $item)
  {
    if ($item->get_enclosure())
    {
      $plsEntry = array();
      $plsEntry["title"] = $item->get_title();
      $plsEntry["link"] = $item->get_enclosure()->link;
      $plsEntry["length"] = (int) $item->get_enclosure()->length;
      $plsItems[] = $plsEntry;
    }
  }
 
  header('Content-type: audio/x-scpls; charset=utf-8');
  header('Content-Disposition: attachment; filename="playlist.pls"');
?>[playlist]
NumberOfEntries=<?= count($plsItems) ?>
 
<?
  for ($i=0; $i<count($plsItems); $i++)
  {
    print("File".($i+1)."=".$plsItems[$i]["link"]."\n");
    print("Title".($i+1)."=".$plsItems[$i]["title"]."\n");
    if ($plsItems[$i]["length"] > 0) print("Length".($i+1)."=".$plsItems[$i]["length"]."\n");
    else  print("Length".($i+1)."=-1\n");
    print("\n");
  }
  print("version=2");
?>

The usage is quite simple. Call the script like this:

http://myserver/the_script.php?url=[encoded rss url]&numEntries=[optional: max number of entries in the pls]

If you don't know how to encode a URL properly, try this:

• open a new tab in firefox
• enter

  javascript:document.write(escape("http://your.friggin.url/feed.xml"))

  into the address bar
• copy & paste the result

If the Feed-URL does not contain any parameters (chars such as &, ? or =) you probably won't need to encode it. Won't hurt though!

You also might want to add a fake URL part (path info) if your client needs that .pls ending in the url. so the script-call would be like:

http://myserver/the_script.php/fake.pls?url=...&numEntries=...

Oh! And you will need a copy of SimplePie for the script to work. Grab it over here

download the script bundled with SimplePie