[Palm WebOS] drPodder (a.k.a. PrePod)

WebOS 1.1+ required.
drPodder v0.4.8 (9/16)

• Just a quick update to add support for Authentication (username/password) of feeds
  If drPodder detects that the feed needs authentication, it will show the username/password fields in the feed edit screen. Otherwise, you need to choose "Authentication" from the "Edit Feed" page.

drPodder v0.4.7 (9/15)

• Error checking while loading from db, should reduce the "hanging at loading feeds" bug.
• Episode details not loaded until at player screen, should reduce application start time and memory usage
• Playback shouldn't resume after error if stream was paused.

drPodder v0.4.5 (9/10)
New Features!

• As usual, you can simply install the new version over the old version.
• Adding Dynamic Playlists
  - Dynamic Playlists are handled like other feeds, you add them using the + button, you can delete them, reorder them, etc.
  - You edit Dynamic Playlists by tapping the feed count area, or by choosing edit playlist in the Episode List screen.
  - You choose the Feeds that will be listed in a dynamic playlist (or All feeds)
  - For example, "All" is auto created for you. Other suggestions: Favorites, Travel, Videos, etc.
• Episode List Filtering
  - The Episode List screen can now be filtered to show only episodes matching certain criteria. This setting is persistent, and defaults to "New".
  - View All/New/Old/Downloaded/Downloading/Paused
• Refresh on Episode List screen will auto-download (if the feed is so configured)
• Sorting by pubDate on Episode lists (pubDate defaults to the time the episode was first seen).

Thanks to JamieHS for the updated Splash Screen logo and the Dynamic Playlist icon!

Issues I'm still working on (Minor enough that I figured a release would be ok):

• drPodder is getting complex enough that I need to spend a few days working on a real, bona-fide manual. Bummer.
• The "Most recent episode title" listed below the Feed Title has 2 problems. First, the Feed Replacements are not applied for Dynamic Playlists. Second, the title shown is always the most recent episode's title. Not the most recent episode that matches the view filter selected.
• Notification of episodes pending wifi will be repeated if you have drPodder running in the background, even if you swipe the notification away.
• Removing a Feed will remove that feed from all dynamic playlists. However, if the dynamic playlist would then have no feeds in it, it will be converted to a "Include All Feeds" dynamic playlist.
• View filtering is a little bit slow. I am working on a fix for this. You do not have to use it. If you choose "ALL" then no filtering will be performed.
• Still working with the new search provider, maybe a few more weeks before this makes it to a release.

Notes on Searching

• Click the "(+)" on the Feed List page to choose either "Enter feed URL" if you know the feed URL or "Search" to search for feeds.
• I will try to add more search services in the future, but DigitalPodcast was a quick one to add. Not all feeds can be found there, but if you contact a feed owner and ask, they should be able to add their feed info to DigitalPodcast.
• In a future version of drPodder, clicking on a feed returned from a search will display sample episodes, album art, and feed description, allowing you to preview (and validate) a feed before adding it to the list. Currently, the feed is just added immediately. Feed update errors will silently fail, so if your newly added feed has 0 episodes and no icon, then the feed is probably invalid.

Download from the PreCentral Homebrew App Gallery

Donations

Enough people have asked about donations that I will go ahead and put this here. I do not plan on having a donation-only version. Feel free to donate, but there is no obligation.

Donate via PayPal

I am writing drPodder because I need a good podcatcher that does what I want it to do. Even the "mature" Windows Mobile solutions I've used in the past disappointed me, so I decided to start early and make it like I like it. drPodder is still beta, but as a developer, bugs bug me, so when my code isn't working correctly, I'll try to fix it as soon as I can.

Note
There are currently 2 bugs in LunaSysMgr (the WebOS module that handles downloads) that directly impact drPodder's ability to properly download podcast episodes.

1. Redirection
   This is the most annoying problem. Almost all podcasts post a URL for an episode that will redirect multiple times. LunaSysMgr fails to redirect all the way to the end, so I have to try to work around the problem. Sometimes I can, sometimes I can't. I have notified Palm of this problem, hopefully they will solve it. View topic - downloadmanager does not follow redirects all the way
2. Directories ending in spaces cause LunaSysMgr to dump core
   This one is just amusing. If your feed title ends in a space, then attempting to save an episode will cause WebOS to restart. Simply remove the ending space from your feed title to fix this problem. 0.3.6 will fix this automatically. View topic - Bug in downloadmanager causes LunaSysMgr to crash

A reminder about album art problems. If you see a distorted or missing album art image, this is more than likely due to a bug in WebOS's handling of 8-bit images. The procedure for fixing the album art is as follows:

1. Exit out of drPodder after adding a feed and seeing a distorted (or missing) image
2. Plug your Pre into your computer using the USB cable and choose USB Drive.
3. Browse to E:\PrePod\.albumArt where E is the drive that your Pre is mounted.
4. Right click on the picture with the name [FEED TITLE]
5. Select Edit (or Open With->Paint)
6. Select File->Save As, and under Save as Type, select JPG
7. Remove the USB cable from the Pre
8. Launch drPodder
9. Edit the feed with the distorted image
10. Change the extension of the Album Art image (the 3rd text box) to .JPG instead of (.BMP, .PNG, or .GIF)

Usage

1. Add your feeds
2. (optional) Download episodes you're interested in
3. Play or stream Podcasts!

UI Description

• Feed List Screen

  • + button to add a feed
  • Refresh button to refresh the list of feeds
  • Feed icon should show up on first update, if the feed has one
  • Line under feed name is the latest episode name
  • 3 mini icons

    • disk - number of episodes downloaded/saved
    • star - number of new episodes (their status is set to Unlistened)
    • pause - number of new episodes you've started listening to

    
    

  • Tap the mini icon area for feed operations: (Mark Listened & Edit Feed)
  • Swipe to delete
  • Reorder is supported

  
  

• Episode List Screen

  • Grayed out episodes are listened
  • Button on right:

    • Blank - listened to, and no file is available
    • Green Down Arrow - Unlistened (new) episode, ready for download
    • Red X - Cancel current download
    • Blue Play - Episode ready to be played
    • Red Minus - Episode has been listened to, file still exists

    
    

  • Tap the button on the right for relevent menu choices

    • Download, Stream, Resume, Restart, Mark [Un]Listened, Episode Details, Delete
    • Restart is the only method for going into an episode and starting from the beginning. All other methods will resume playback from your last saved position

    
    

  
  

• Episode Details Screen:

  • Episode Title
  • Playback scrubber with current time and time remaining

    • also has a buffer indicator when streaming

    
    

  • Episode Description (scrollable)
  • Play/Pause/Download
  • +/-20, +/-60 seconds buttons
  • All playback operations *should* save your current position

  
  

drPodder v0.4.3 (8/23)

• As usual, you can simply install the new version over the old version.
• PrePod is now drPodder. As billybennett pointed out in post #5, Pre* isn't a good name choice, for the reason he gave, as well as: App Names and Trademarks and Copyrights - webOSdev - Palm
  The name will still show up as PrePod in the Launcher and the Application Menu until a reboot.
• Feed title and prev/next buttons added to Episode List screen (not on Episode Details screen yet, still trying to figure out how that should look)
• Play from Oldest/Newest - tap the feed title in the Episode List (or go the the Application Menu) to see this option. Great for short podcasts, it will start at one end of the Episode List and play through to the other end automatically.
• You can now refresh from the Episode List. This will not kick off automatic downloads, but you are on the Episode List screen, so you can easily tap "download" if you see something you want.
• I've added all filtering options from DigitalPodcast into the search. The default is still "no filtering"
• "Listened" and "Unlistened" terminology has been changed to "Old" and "New"
• A stored bookmark will be cleared when you swipe away Episodes now (in addition to deleting and marking as Old)
• Text size reduced in Episode List
• Added splash screen with loading status indication
• Feed URL's won't be changed on redirection. This fixes the problem remmysmom was having where a public wifi spot redirected all the feeds to a login page.
• +/- 60 skip has a slightly different icon now.

Notes on Background Updating/Downloading

• Please leave notifications enabled unless they really bug you. They're just cool. Plus, disabled notifications hasn't been tested much.
• If you throw away a notification like "Updating Feeds" or "Downloading Episode", I think the process continues. I'm not sure what I want to do with this "feature".
• Tapping a notification just launches drPodder, it doesn't take you to any specific location in the program.
• If you don't like Auto Updates through the day, just disable the feature. You can still use the refresh button on the feed list to update.
• DL only over WiFi - When turned on, this will limit automated downloading to only be allowed when WiFi is connected. Clicking on an episode to manually download is still an option.
• When the Pre's screen is off, and the Pre is not charging, WiFi is off. A future version will include a preference to turn WiFi on during the update, I just couldn't get that working for this release.

PrePod v0.4.1 URGENT PATCH!

PrePod v0.4.0 (8/16)

• Background Updating/Downloading
  Preferences: Auto-Update, Update Interval, Download only over WiFi
  Dashboard Notifications for: Updating Feeds, Downloading Episodes, Downloaded Episodes, Downloads Pending WiFi
• Basic Podcast Search Capability
  uses Digital Podcast, Type in a keyword, hit enter, click on a feed to add to your list
• Streaming is quite a bit more stable now

PrePod v0.3.6

• Album art is now downloaded once and resized before being displayed. This should do 2 things - first, load time will be faster since we aren't making a bunch of images to display. Second, scrolling should be less painful since WebOS isn't trying to move huge, scaled down images around. Instead, it is moving thumbnails around. On your first load after installing this update, all album art will appear to be blank. Refresh once to see the locally cached album art.
  • Related to this, there is a bug in WebOS where 8 bit images can't be resized using the built-in extractfs process. The feed album art will be either blank, or look corrupted (album art that looks stretched is normal) To resolve this, use the following method once after adding a feed:
  
  
  
  1. Exit out of PrePod after adding a feed and seeing a distorted (or missing) image
  2. Plug your Pre into your computer using the USB cable and choose USB Drive.
  3. Browse to E:\PrePod\.albumArt where E is the drive that your Pre is mounted.
  4. Right click on the picture with the name [FEED TITLE]
  5. Select Edit (or Open With->Paint)
  6. Select File->Save As, and under Save as Type, select JPG
  7. Remove the USB cable from the Pre
  8. Launch PrePod
  9. Edit the feed with the distorted image
  10. Change the extension of the Album Art image (the 3rd text box) to .JPG instead of (.BMP, .PNG, or .GIF)
• Changing video playback to be in a scene inside of PrePod. Still no bookmarking/resuming, but this is a little cleaner. Plus, some videos that didn't work before work now... odd.
• If episodes don't have GUID's, making the unique link be link+title+date string (should fix Morning X on 101X)

PrePod v0.3.5

• Control via BT Headphones or Palm included headphones (pause/play, next/prev map to +/- 20 seconds)
• WiFi should stay on through downloads as long as PrePod is open
• Downloads go to /media/internal/PrePod/[FEED TITLE]/[EPISODE TITLE]-YYYYMMDD.[EXT]
• Preferences added to Feed List menu
  • Show Album Art: ON displays album art, OFF hides it (if your display is laggy)
  • Show Feed Details: ON displays #Downloaded, #New, #Bookmarked, OFF shows only #New (reminder, an episode is considered "New" until you have finished listening to it or have manually marked it "Listened")
  • Enable Single Tap: ON icons in the Episode List do their default action with a tap, OFF a menu is brought up with actions to choose from
• Edit Feed command added to Episode List
• Volume keys are now captured when the application is open so that they control media volume (instead of ringer volume)
• AlbumArt is editable (make it a space to keep it from displaying)
• Temp files are deleted on aborted downloads
• Import/Export OPML now includes options from the feed configuration page (delete after playback, auto download, maximum downloads to keep, and replacement strings)

There is no automated updating/downloading yet, but if you load the app and press refresh, the following occurs

1. Feeds are refreshed
2. Each feed is checked for unlistened episodes. If there are unlistened episodes, and the feed is configured to auto-download, then episodes will be downloaded up to "keep at most" (see the feed options).
3. If there are more episodes downloaded than the keep at most setting is set to, they will be deleted (if there is no bookmark). Therefore, if you want to manage the episodes yourself, make sure you set keep at most to "All", or uncheck the "Auto-Download" option.

PrePod v0.3.3 (8/1)

• Rudimentary handling of redirects in mp3's (Eerie Radio is the basis for this)
• Automatically update on first load after fresh install
• Feed icons are set at 58px by 58px now. Some will be distorted, sorry!
• OPML export via email, import via prepod.xml file (place prepod.xml into /media/internal - the root directory that is mounted when you plug your Pre into the USB port)
• Hiding download/play commands if there is no enclosure (some feeds will occasionally send out informational episodes with no enclosure)
• Add feed is its own scene now
• Auto-downoading episodes (if configured) during refresh.

  NOTE: downloads 2 at a time. If you manually cancel any download,
  the rest of the downloads may hang (I'm looking into it but I don't think it's my fault)

• Allowing per-feed replacements for episode titles in the episode list view
• Auto-delete after finishing episode (if so configured)
• Mark all listened/unlistened in episode list view
• Download indicator on Feed List (spinner with number inside indicating how many episodes are downloading). Tap the spinner to get a popup to cancel the downloads.
• DEFAULT ACTIONS

  
  In an effort to reduce the clicks, I am introducing default actions. The default actions in the Episode List view are indicated by the icon on the right hand side of the Episode Row. If you tap this icon, you get a default action like

  • If the Episode is new, but not downloaded, the default action is to download it
  • If the Episode is downloading, the default action is to cancel the download (NO PROMPT)
  • If the Episode is downloaded, but not listened to yet, the default action is to play/resume it.
  • If the Episode has been listened to, the default action is to delete the file (NO PROMPT)
  • If none of the above apply, a popup gives you choices

  
  You can always access the popup with contextually relevant choices by holding down instead of tapping. If you hold anywhere on the row until the row highlights, and then let go, you get the popup instead of the default action. If you are trying to get the popup menu, I would suggest holding on the title (not the default action button) so that if you let up too soon, you do not invoke the default action.
  

• Swipe to delete in Episode view will delete and "mark as listened" downloaded episodes, or cancel a download.
• Video playback is now "supported" (ok, sorta... when you try to play a video podcast, it will launch the built-in video player. No bookmarks are retained in video podcasts until I can get the video player brought into the application. Video podcasts thus will not be automatically marked as "listened", and thus, not automatically deleted when finished)
• Lots of under the hood improvements that will make it easier for me to get background downloading working. :)

PrePod v0.3.1 (7/28)

• Minor Bugfix: Newly added feeds would not store bookmarks or pause/play correctly
• Fixed formatting issue with feeds having > 100 episodes
• Note, 0.3.1 has a formatting issue for the feed icon, it will look too narrow on most feeds. That will be fixed whenever the next release comes. Don't know how I didn't notice that.

PrePod v0.3.0 (7/27)
- Now using sqlite3 directly. I was able to add quite a few feeds in before I eventually hit an error (around 30 feeds or so). Please try adding your feeds a couple at a time and exit/restart PrePod to ensure they are still saving.
Bookmark functionality is a bit more useful now. The Bookmark is still automatically saved, but now you should see a blue bar in the episode list to indicate playback progress. As with most other functions, you can tap the icon on the right to clear the bookmark. Also, the "pause" icon on the feed list screen indicates how many episodes are bookmarked.
- When you finish an episode, the bookmark is cleared, and the episode is marked as "listened". You still have to manually delete the episode. Autodelete will come in the future.
- Keyboard hotkeys. They're not configurable, but the bottom 5 keys on your keyboard (Shift, @, space, ., Sym) now correspond to the 5 (slightly changed) buttons on the Episode Detail screen (the player screen) - "Skip back 60 seconds", "Skip back 15 seconds", "Play/Pause", "Skip forward 15 seconds", "Skip forward 60 seconds".




License

From v0.4.1 forward, I have changed the license. It is still Open Source, but I feel the MIT license was too open. I don't want somebody else to take drPodder, slap a new name on it, and sell it as their own work. Anyone is free to look at the source to get ideas for their own apps.
drPodder by Jamie Hatfield is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 Unported License

drPodder is Open Source Software and hosted at prepod in WebOS Applications - Gitorious



i take no credit for this app and the original thread can be found here:

Code

http://forums.precentral.net/homebrew-apps/194583-prepod-v0-2-3-7-24-v0-2-2-a.html

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