iTunes URL Decoder

Posted on August 8, 2007
Filed Under podcasting | 9 Comments

Now that I think about it, it would be really standup of Apple or someone to provide a webservice that would take an Apple iTunes Podcast link and do the translation to return the standard XML feed that drives that particular show. That way, people that implement various products that act on the feeds could the iTunes link and do the conversion themselves. It would certainly save me a lot of time from doing that process I related in the previous post. It really sucks, and I’d be happy to never do it again.

Update: Andrew Clarke has this working as a client side python script. It works!

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    9 Responses to “iTunes URL Decoder”

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    1. Andrew Clarke on August 9th, 2007 3:50 am

      I’ve just written a Python script to do this. As you’ll see from the comments, it’s a bit of a hack, but I’ve tested it with two different ITMS links and it seems to work alright.

      http://blizzard.dnsalias.org/itunes-url-decoder.py

      Regards
      Andrew

      2. Comment Permalink
    2. dave on August 9th, 2007 7:50 am

      Andrew, that ROCKS! Thank you for it. I obviously didn’t spend a lot of time trying to reverse engineer the ITMS protocol. Thank you for doing it.

      3. Comment Permalink
    3. Andrew Clarke on August 9th, 2007 9:08 am

      Thanks. I probably spent an hour on it. About half the time I spent trying to figure out the structure of Apple’s XML. It’s all over the shop…

      4. Comment Permalink
    4. Andrew Clarke on August 10th, 2007 9:22 am

      Dave, refresh that URL for a small bugfix to the script. :)

      5. Comment Permalink
    5. Chris Nuss on October 14th, 2007 4:07 pm

      Thanks so much for this little script…. I’ve been searching for a way to listen to/subscribe to podcasts that people only publish on itunes. This is one of the last things that I have been wanting to sort out on my linux system!!! Once again.. Thanks so much!!!!

      6. Comment Permalink
    6. iTunes URL Decoder! « The Broderick Adventure on February 27th, 2008 1:07 am

      [...] Finally a solution. A man named Andrew Clarke has created a Python script to just that very thing! And it works! Beautifully! I originally found this post here: http://www.evilgeniuschronicles.org/wordpress/2007/08/08/itunes-url-decoder/ [...]

      7. Comment Permalink
    7. kmorey.net » Blog Archive » iTunes podcasts on March 12th, 2008 10:02 am

      [...] I ran across a python script that will decode the itunes link to the real xml feed that powers the podcast. I never knew there was a feed somewhere else that itunes just wrapped. I thought they were hosted by apple. Good thing they aren’t. [...]

      8. Comment Permalink
    8. R on March 16th, 2008 12:07 pm

      This is the tool I’ve been looking for, but I’m not sure how to use it. Should I be able to just d/l it and run it?

      9. Comment Permalink
    9. seshuprasad on January 25th, 2010 4:17 pm

      http://blizzard.dnsalias.org/itunes-url-decoder.py
      this link is not working can you please send the decoder to my mail seshuprasad.v@gmail.com.

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