Podcast

Connecting Google Reader and podget

2008-11-23

For some time, I’ve had a Perl script that runs regularly, backing up my Google Reader subscriptions using the standard OPML format:

#!/usr/bin/perl
#
# Usage:
#  backup-google-reader-opml file-to-write-to.opml google.user.name@domain google-password

use strict;
use warnings;

use WWW::Mechanize;

my $mech = WWW::Mechanize->new();

$mech->get("http://reader.google.com")
    or die "Cannot reach Google Reader Homepage";

$mech->submit_form(
    form_number => 1,
    fields =>
    {
        Email => $ARGV[1],
        Passwd => $ARGV[2]
    }
)
    or die "Cannot submit form";

$mech->get("http://www.google.com/reader/subscriptions/export");
$mech->save_content($ARGV[0]);

However, I recently wrote another script (this time Python) that then takes this OPML, parses out all the URLs that are tagged with ‘podcast’, and outputs a serverlist file for podget (an automated console-based podcast downloader). This enables me to subscribe to a podcast in Google Reader, and have the podcast automatically added to the download list. The script looks like this:

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