ipodderx-rs/README.md

ipodderx-rs

A headless podcatcher: scans RSS/Atom feeds, downloads enclosures (HTTP and BitTorrent), files them into per-feed folders, and reaps old episodes to stay under a disk quota. Runs as a one-shot CLI or as a daemon with a Unix-socket JSON event stream for a UI to attach to.

Lineage

This is a modern Rust rewrite of ipodderx-core, the Python 2 engine behind iPodderX (2004-2008, Ray Slakinski & August Trometer), which was open-sourced under the MIT License in 2010.

What carries over: the feed scan and TTL handling, GUID/URL dedupe, per-feed and per-date download folders, keyword filters, the explicit-content filter, torrent enclosures, and "SmartSpace" -- the oldest-first disk quota reaper.

What does not: iTunes and iPhoto export via AppleScript, text-to-speech enclosures, the Windows WMP/COM paths, XML plists and Python pickles for state, the directory.iPodderX.com survey ping, 3DES-encrypted preferences, and the printMSG stdout protocol (replaced by a JSON-lines socket).

Quickstart

cargo install --path .

ipx add https://atp.fm/rss          # names the feed from its own title
ipx list
ipx fetch                           # scan now
ipx daemon                          # or run continuously, honouring each feed's <ttl>

Config lives at ~/.config/ipx/config.toml (mode 0600, since it may hold feed passwords); state at ~/.local/share/ipx/state.db. Override with IPX_CONFIG and IPX_DATA_DIR. Set IPX_LOG=ipx=debug for verbose logging on stderr.

Commands

command	what it does
ipx add <url> [--folder X] [--keywords a,b]	subscribe; the id comes from the feed title
ipx rm <feed>	unsubscribe; downloads and history are kept
ipx list / ipx status	subscriptions and their state
ipx fetch [FEED] [--force]	scan; --force ignores the TTL
ipx reap [--dry-run]	run retention now
ipx import/export <file.opml>	move subscriptions in or out
ipx daemon	scheduler plus the control socket

Any command with a wire form probes the socket first: if a daemon is running it does the work, and the CLI just renders the events it streams back. --local forces in-process execution.

Configuration

[general]
download_dir   = "~/Podcasts"
socket         = "/run/user/1000/ipx.sock"   # default: $XDG_RUNTIME_DIR/ipx.sock
interval_mins  = 60          # default poll; a feed's own <ttl> wins when longer
organize       = "feed"      # "feed" | "date"
max_total_gb   = 50          # 0 = unlimited
max_age_days   = 30          # 0 = keep forever
max_new_per_check = 3        # per feed, per scan. 0 = unlimited (pulls whole back catalogues)
media_types = ["audio", "video"]  # what downloads automatically. Anything else is still
                             # listed and can be fetched by hand -- blog feeds put article
                             # images in enclosures. Empty takes everything.

[torrent]
enabled        = true
seed_ratio     = 1.0         # stop seeding at this ratio ...
seed_time_mins = 60          # ... or after this long, whichever comes first
port_range     = "6881-6889"
stall_mins     = 30          # give up on a torrent making no progress

[feeds.atp]
url                = "https://atp.fm/rss"
folder             = "Accidental Tech Podcast"  # default: the feed title
keywords           = ["deep dive"]   # OR across keywords, AND within one
allow_explicit     = false
auto_download      = true
max_new_per_check  = 3        # the rest wait for the next scan
username           = "ray"                  # optional HTTP basic auth
password_env       = "IPX_ATP_PASS"         # or a literal `password`

Retention keeps files that are flagged in the database, and deletes read episodes before unread ones, oldest first.

Socket protocol

Newline-delimited JSON over a Unix socket, both directions.

$ printf '{"cmd":"fetch","force":true}\n' | socat - UNIX-CONNECT:$XDG_RUNTIME_DIR/ipx.sock
{"ev":"feed_start","feed":"atp"}
{"ev":"progress","feed":"atp","url":"...","file":"ep1.mp3","done":8192,"total":3000000}
{"ev":"download_done","feed":"atp","url":"...","path":"...","bytes":3000000}
{"ev":"feed_done","feed":"atp","new":1,"downloaded":1,"failed":0,"torrents":0}
{"ev":"scan_done","feeds":1}

Commands: fetch (optional feed, force), reap (optional dry_run), status. Events: feed_start, feed_skip, feed_done, feed_error, progress, download_done, download_error, torrent_deferred, reaped, reap_done, scan_done, status, error. scan_done, reap_done and status are terminal -- a client that asked for work stops there.

Progress is throttled to whole percents. The stream is a broadcast, so a client attached to a busy daemon also sees that daemon's other work.

OPML

Two different things, both supported:

Importing and exporting a file copies subscriptions in or out once — ipx import subs.opml, ipx export subs.opml, or the OPML button in the UI.

Subscribing to an OPML URL is a live subscription, as iPodderX had. Add the OPML's URL like any other feed; every scan re-reads it and keeps your feed list in step. An OPML is recognised by its content, so a URL without a .opml extension still works.

The feeds inside it are not written to config.toml — the OPML is the source of truth, so they are re-derived each scan and held in the database. Your config keeps only what you chose. They show as a collapsible folder in the sidebar, download into one nested folder, and newly listed ones are scanned in the same run rather than waiting for the next interval. They inherit the subscription's settings; change anything on one and it gets its own config entry from then on.

When a feed drops out of the OPML upstream:

it has downloads	what happens
no	unsubscribed and removed from the config
yes	kept, flagged in the UI as no longer listed

A downloaded file is never left behind with nothing explaining where it came from.

Web UI

[web]
enabled = true
bind    = "0.0.0.0:8080"   # 127.0.0.1:8080 by default
token   = ""               # generated and written back on first run

ipx daemon then serves it in the same process (ipx daemon --web ADDR overrides the bind for one run). On first start it mints a token, saves it to config.toml, and prints the URL to open:

web ui token generated. Open:
  http://0.0.0.0:8080/?token=1f4c…

?token= sets a year-long cookie, so you only paste it once per browser. Everything is behind that token, including /media/... — a cookie rather than a header precisely because an <audio> element cannot send headers.

Browse feeds, read show notes, play episodes in the browser (Range requests are served, so seeking works), download or delete individual files, mark episodes read or flag them to keep, and edit a feed's folder/keywords/explicit/auto-download/limit settings. Config edits are written to config.toml and hot-reloaded — no daemon restart.

Show notes are feed-supplied HTML from an untrusted source; they are sanitized with ammonia server-side before they reach the page.

It is plain HTTP. On a LAN bind, the token and everything else crosses the network in the clear — and a feed URL can itself contain a credential (Patreon's, for one, carries an auth token). Put it behind a reverse proxy with TLS if that matters to you.

Layout

Feeds down the side; the selected feed's episodes across the top; the selected episode's text and its enclosures in the pane below, which is where you play, download or delete them. The divider between the two panes drags and the position is remembered. An OPML subscription's page instead lists the feeds inside it.

An item may carry several enclosures. All of them appear in the pane below; the row summarises the one you would act on and notes how many others there are. Anything that is not audio or video gets a View link — opening the publisher's copy, or the local one once downloaded — rather than a player.

Log view

The Log button in the sidebar shows the running daemon's output live, in four tabs: Daemon I/O is the control protocol itself — every command in and every event out, as JSON; Scans is feed and download activity; HTTP is web requests; All is everything: feed scans, downloads, torrent activity and every HTTP request, with level and text filters and a copy button. It reads a 2000-line ring buffer held inside the process (/api/logs), not a file — so it works the same under Docker, where logs go to stdout and there is no file to tail. The buffer keeps debug even when the terminal does not, so protocol traffic and routine skips are there without making stderr unreadable — IPX_UI_LOG changes what it captures and IPX_LOG what reaches stderr.

Tests

cargo test              # the server: parsing, filters, retention, schedules, SQL
node tests/page-smoke.js  # the page script loads without throwing
npx playwright test     # a real browser against a real daemon

The Rust tests cover the server and the smoke test catches a script that fails to load, but neither can see a wrong selector, a handler that runs and does nothing, or a page that renders empty — which is what has actually slipped through. The Playwright suite drives a headless browser against a daemon started on fixture feeds, and each test maps to a bug that reached a user: the page rendering empty, a dead theme toggle, settings not persisting, episode metadata, filter tabs, the feed URL field and its copy button, the log tabs, and OPML folders.

npm install gets the test runner; the browser itself comes from npx playwright install --with-deps chromium (in install.sh).

Docker

docker compose up -d          # builds the image and starts it
docker compose logs -f ipx    # the token is printed on first start

docker-compose.yml mounts ./config, ./data and a downloads directory, publishes 8099 for the UI and 6881 (TCP and UDP — DHT needs the UDP side), and sets PUID/PGID to 99:100 so files land owned the way Unraid shares expect. On first start the entrypoint writes a config bound to 0.0.0.0, since a container's loopback is not reachable from outside it, and prints the URL with its generated token.

The healthcheck runs ipx status, which goes through the control socket to the command worker — so it catches a daemon that is alive but wedged, not merely one that has died.

Running it as a service

contrib/ has a systemd user unit for the daemon, and a timer plus one-shot service if you would rather run periodic scans with no daemon (in which case there is no socket for a UI to attach to).

License

MIT. See LICENSE.