Pony should check for new sixgun podcasts from a server.

[Paul Elms]

At present the sixgun podcast feeds addresses are taken from the strings file at first install. This offers no way for the addition of future sixgun podcasts, without an upgrade. The app should check a server for the feeds and take the addresses of new feeds during the feed updates.

[Fabian A. Scherschel (fabsh)]

Good point. We currently don't have a centralised feed location though. I could just add a publicly available text file to the sixgun.org server with a list of feeds. How's that?

[Paul Elms (scifly)]

It could be as simple as having an xml file (pony likes reading xml files :) ) hosted on sixgun.org with simple tags like:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<podcast_url>http://feeds.feedburner.com/linuxoutlaws-ogg</podcast_url>
<podcast_url>http://ranto fab - kuhn .... </podcast_url>

Then it only takes adding the feed url to the file and pony users get the new feed next time they update the feeds.
Would that be possible?

On a side note:
Having this sort of thing set up also lets you do other more random stuff like have a motd in pony or other little 'extras'..

[Fabian A. Scherschel (fabsh)]

Good idea. Is that the full XML code? Looks like it needs a closing tag there, no?

Also, if we implement this, please plan for the fact that the file might be 404 if I frak the server up. :D

[Paul Elms (scifly)]

My XML is crap and it was an example rather than full code :)
How about this:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<podcast_feeds>
<podcast_url>http://feeds.feedburner.com/linuxoutlaws-ogg</podcast_url>
<podcast_url>http://rantofabkuhn.com </podcast_url>
</podcast_feeds>

Obviously the rantofabkuhn.com address is incorrect.. But if you use those tags I can code Pony to read them. No rush to do it, although I'd like a pony release to have this before you launch rantofabkuhn (or whatever it is called), so pony users can get the new podcast automatically. The code changes in pony are not very large so I can get pony sorted fairly soon to do this and it can go out in another bug fix release. All I need from you Fab (other than hosting the file) is the URL to the file once it is up. Obviously it can go up without the RantOFabKuhn feed, and you can add it when you are ready.

Re the file going 404, Pony's XML handling is now more resilient since RantOFab went down :)

[Fabian A. Scherschel (fabsh)]

OK, here you go: http://sixgun.org/services/ponyexpress/feedlist.xml

Is that good? :)

[Paul Elms (scifly)]

Fab, When you get a minute can you change the feedlist.xml file to that attached here. It needs to contain some more info about identi.ca groups and tags. I have committed (commit 0fae69a on gitorious ) the changes to Pony to use the new file, so new Sixgun Podcasts will automatically be added when Pony checks for new episodes.

[Paul Elms (scifly)]

Doh, Forgot the file..

[Fabian A. Scherschel (fabsh)]

Done. :)

[Paul Elms (scifly)]

This was released in version 0.4.3.