Podcast Player of Choice API backend

Overview

Podcast Player of Choice aims to simplify listening to podcasts in different players.

As podcasts are built on an open standard, many players exist. Subscribing to a new podcast in your podcast player of choice, however, isn't always straightforward. This project aims to make the process simpler.

This is the API backend, the front end can be found here: github.com/will-head/podcast-player-of-choice

Setup

$ bundle install
$ rails db:create
$ rails db:migrate
$ rails s -p 3001

Testing

To run RSpec (with coverage) followed by Rubocop run:

$ rspec && rubocop

Approach

The backend uses Rails and outputs JSON. It's set to automatically deploy to https://ppoc.dev/ when continuous integration tests on Travis pass.

API

The API includes versioning in the url scheme. The current version is v1, accessible at:
https://api.ppoc.dev/v1/

Any calls without versioning will redirect to the latest version:
https://api.ppoc.dev/

The API version is included in the header, for example:
version: V1

Feeds

POST /feeds

Returns feeds

curl --request POST \
  --url https://api.ppoc.dev/v1/feeds \
  --header 'content-type: application/json' \
  --data '{
	"data": {
		"feed": "http://example.com/feed"
	}
}'

The following feed formats are accepted as input:

http://example.com/feed
https://example.com/feed
feed://example.com/feed
itpc://example.com/feed
podcast://example.com/feed
downcast://example.com/feed
pcast://example.com/feed

castro://subscribe/example.com/feed
pktc://subscribe/example.com/feed

overcast://x-callback-url/add?url=http%3A%2F%2Fexample.com%2Ffeed

On success, the above command returns JSON structured like this:

{
  "status": 200,
  "request": {
    "feed": "http://example.com/feed"
  },
  "desktop": {
    "default": {
      "feed_title": "Default",
      "feed_url": "feed://example.com/feed"
    },
    "rss": {
      "feed_title": "RSS",
      "feed_url": "http://example.com/feed"
    },
    "itunes": {
      "feed_title": "iTunes",
      "feed_url": "itpc://example.com/feed"
    },
    "apple_podcasts": {
      "feed_title": "Apple Podcasts",
      "feed_url": "podcast://example.com/feed"
    }
  },
  "ios": {
    "default": {
      "feed_title": "Default",
      "feed_url": "feed://example.com/feed"
    },
    "apple_podcasts": {
      "feed_title": "Apple Podcasts",
      "feed_url": "podcast://example.com/feed"
    },
    "overcast": {
      "feed_title": "Overcast",
      "feed_url": "overcast://x-callback-url/add?url=http%3A%2F%2Fexample.com%2Ffeed"
    },
    "castro": {
      "feed_title": "Castro",
      "feed_url": "castro://subscribe/example.com/feed"
    },
    "pocket_casts": {
      "feed_title": "Pocket Casts",
      "feed_url": "pktc://subscribe/example.com/feed"
    },
    "downcast": {
      "feed_title": "Downcast",
      "feed_url": "downcast://example.com/feed"
    }
  },
  "android": {
    "default": {
      "feed_title": "Default",
      "feed_url": "pcast://example.com/feed"
    }
  }
}

If an unsupported feed or invalid feed format is used as input, the following will be returned:

{
  "status": 422,
  "request": {
    "feed": "unsupported://example.com/feed"
  },
  "title": "Unprocessable Entity"
}

Improvements

• Add support for iTunes ID links as input via iTunes Search API: Lookup Examples
• Return status in JSON body
• Return 422 status and Error in JSON for invalid input feed
• Remove redundant tests from FeedsController
• Split FeedTransator into separate classes
• Allow other feed formats as input - for example 'podcast://example.com/feed'
• Provide short link for feeds - for example ppoc.dev/x4ed6 -> https://podcastplayerofchoice.com/link/?url=http://example.com/feed
• Redirect root to API documentation page on podcastplayerofchoice.com
• Validate feed url
• Add rate limiting
• Add CORS
• Refactor add_prefix_to_feed to use sub/[]= Faster to use split