PowerShell script to download podcast episodes

It’s late at night.

I should go to sleep.

But I love this podcast called Empire and feel this itch to download its episodes and store locally for re-listening to later. In the past I’ve used castget to download podcasts, but it’s not very flexible – it cannot name the files the way I want. All it can do is pick up the title, and podcasts like Empire don’t have a season or episode number in the title so all the files are in a alphabetical order rather the the correct order.

I poke around the RSS feed of the podcast and realize that it has all this info.

<pubDate>Tue, 04 Apr 2023 01:00:00 -0000</pubDate>
<itunes:episodeType>full</itunes:episodeType>
<itunes:season>2</itunes:season>
<itunes:episode>20</itunes:episode>

<itunes:episodeType>full</itunes:episodeType>

<itunes:season>2</itunes:season>

<itunes:episode>20</itunes:episode>

So it’s presumeably just a case of me parsing the feed and downloading the episodes. Surely this can be done easily via PowerShell.

Sure enough, it can be. And happy with the progress I made here I set about downloading episodes of a few other podcasts too I had my eyes on. The result is a bunch of scripts in this repo.

Here’s the one for the Empire podcast. It may change a bit from what’s in the repo as it’s unlikely I will keep updating it here.

$feedUrl = "https://feeds.megaphone.fm/empirepodcast"
$outDir = $Global:PodcastPath + [IO.Path]::DirectorySeparatorChar + "Empire"

# Number of digits in the season and episodes
$seasonPadding = 2
$episodePadding = 3

# Should I include season and episode in the filename? What about pubdate? 
$skipSeasonEpisode = $false
$includePubDate = $false

# === Typically there should be nothing to change past this point ===
# === Except any changes to the title identifier in the loop below ===
if (!(Test-Path -Path "$outDir" -PathType Container)) {
    New-Item -Path "$outDir" -ItemType Directory
}

try {
    $webRequest = Invoke-WebRequest -Uri $feedUrl -ErrorAction Stop
    if ($webRequest.StatusCode -ne 200) {
        Write-Error "Something went wrong. StatusCode $($webRequest.StatusCode) - $($webRequest.StatusDescription)"
    }
    
} catch {
    Write-Error "Something went wrong: $($_.Exception.Message)"
}

$xmlContent = [xml]$webRequest.Content

foreach ($item in $xmlContent.rss.Channel.item) {
    # Get the real title from the feed
    $realTitle = $item.title
    
    # Replace any spaces at the beginning and end of the title
    # Remove certain characters
    $episodeTitle = $realTitle -replace '[/:]','' -replace '^\s+','' -replace '\s+$',''

    # If Season or Episode exists then capture them with some padding
    # Only do this if I haven't set the toggle above to skip
    if (!$skipSeasonEpisode) {
        if ($item.season) { $seasonNumber = "S{0:d$seasonPadding}" -f [int]$item.season } else { $seasonNumber = "" }
        if ($item.episode) { $episodeNumber = "E{0:d$episodePadding}" -f [int]$item.episode } else { $episodeNumber = "" }
    
        # Add a space if either the season or episode exists
        if ($seasonNumber.Length -eq 0 -and $episodeNumber.Length -eq 0) { $spacer = "" } else { $spacer = " " }

    } else {
        # Initialize these variables coz sometimes I copy paste the scripts
        $seasonNumber = ""
        $episodeNumber = ""
        $spacer = ""
    }

    if ($includePubDate) { $pubDate = Get-Date $item.pubDate -Format "yyyyMMddHHmm " } else { $pubDate = "" }
    
    # Generate the title
    $title = "${pubDate}${seasonNumber}${episodeNumber}${spacer}$episodeTitle"

    # The download Url
    $downloadUrl = $item.enclosure.url

    # Figure out the output file name
    $outputFile = "${outDir}/${title}.mp3"
    
    # Check if the output file exists; download if it doesn't
    if (Test-Path -Path $outputFile) {
        Write-Host "Skipping $outputFile as it already exists"
    } else {
        Write-Host "Downloading $downloadUrl as $outputFile"
        Invoke-WebRequest -Uri "$downloadUrl" -OutFile $outputFile
    }
}

$feedUrl = "https://feeds.megaphone.fm/empirepodcast"

$outDir = $Global:PodcastPath + [IO.Path]::DirectorySeparatorChar + "Empire"

# Number of digits in the season and episodes

$seasonPadding = 2

$episodePadding = 3

# Should I include season and episode in the filename? What about pubdate?

$skipSeasonEpisode = $false

$includePubDate = $false

# === Typically there should be nothing to change past this point ===

# === Except any changes to the title identifier in the loop below ===

if (!(Test-Path -Path "$outDir" -PathType Container)) {

New-Item -Path "$outDir" -ItemType Directory

}

try {

$webRequest = Invoke-WebRequest -Uri $feedUrl -ErrorAction Stop

if ($webRequest.StatusCode -ne 200) {

Write-Error "Something went wrong. StatusCode $($webRequest.StatusCode) - $($webRequest.StatusDescription)"

}

} catch {

Write-Error "Something went wrong: $($_.Exception.Message)"

}

$xmlContent = [xml]$webRequest.Content

foreach ($item in $xmlContent.rss.Channel.item) {

# Get the real title from the feed

$realTitle = $item.title

# Replace any spaces at the beginning and end of the title

# Remove certain characters

$episodeTitle = $realTitle -replace '[/:]','' -replace '^\s+','' -replace '\s+$',''

# If Season or Episode exists then capture them with some padding

# Only do this if I haven't set the toggle above to skip

if (!$skipSeasonEpisode) {

if ($item.season) { $seasonNumber = "S{0:d$seasonPadding}" -f [int]$item.season } else { $seasonNumber = "" }

if ($item.episode) { $episodeNumber = "E{0:d$episodePadding}" -f [int]$item.episode } else { $episodeNumber = "" }

# Add a space if either the season or episode exists

if ($seasonNumber.Length -eq 0 -and $episodeNumber.Length -eq 0) { $spacer = "" } else { $spacer = " " }

} else {

# Initialize these variables coz sometimes I copy paste the scripts

$seasonNumber = ""

$episodeNumber = ""

$spacer = ""

}

if ($includePubDate) { $pubDate = Get-Date $item.pubDate -Format "yyyyMMddHHmm " } else { $pubDate = "" }

# Generate the title

$title = "${pubDate}${seasonNumber}${episodeNumber}${spacer}$episodeTitle"

# The download Url

$downloadUrl = $item.enclosure.url

# Figure out the output file name

$outputFile = "${outDir}/${title}.mp3"

# Check if the output file exists; download if it doesn't

if (Test-Path -Path $outputFile) {

Write-Host "Skipping $outputFile as it already exists"

} else {

Write-Host "Downloading $downloadUrl as $outputFile"

Invoke-WebRequest -Uri "$downloadUrl" -OutFile $outputFile

}

Podcast Recommendation

I do highly recommend the Empire podcast, though, if you love a bit of history. It’s such a money pit though as they keep interviewing writers and recommending books in each episode, such that I end up buying a ton of books. 😄 Not that I have time to read these, so currently I have a huge pile of unread books and a massive guit-trip about spending money and not having space to store these! I should be spending time reading them instead of creating scripts like these… 🙃

Book Recommendation

Speaking of which, I am currently reading Peter Frankopan’s excellent “The First Crusade“. I came across it in the first episode of Season 2 and so far I am enjoying it. Only wish I had more time to read it properly. I finally switched to its audiobook version today (am about half-way through the book and progress has been slow, so time for new measures). I love the narrator so I am glad with the switch. This is a book best read though, atleast for a major part, as there’s so many names and places and it’s difficult to keep track of these when listening. I constantly rewind as I have missed something. With a physical book it’s way easier to keep going back a few pages or checking out the index.

I had no idea who Alexios Komnenos was until I read this book. Now I do. ☺️