#39 - My New Custom Podcasting Application

Once I got that episode through post-production, I took a look at my RSS generation.

The RSS file is critical for podcasting.

Spotify and all the podcast directories rely on a podcast show's RSS file for information about the show and about each episode, including where the audio file resides.

This is an XML file.

I create it.

I upload it.

I reviewed my RSS file that my app generates and found issues.

Now, the podcast directories are successfully ingesting my XML file, so these were not major issues, but the malformed characters are very irritating.

I dug into three tags related to the episode's title, which turned into a major headache, as these tags are confusing, and I've always kind of done them wrong with no major effect.

Now, the messed up characters turned into a challenge for both Cloud and Gemini to fix.

Lots of failures.

I tried different ideas and ultimately found the solution.

I'm happy to remove this irritation.

I'm not happy about how long this

irritation took to fix.

My Oasis XML files are better

now.

but they could be better.

I had Gemini take a look at what my improved generation outputs.

There's still minor issues.

Now, the issues didn't bother me enough to want to fix the issues, but you know what bothers me? I have a bloated generation service class.

It's bursting at the seams, and if there's something that goes wrong...

I have a feeling it's going to be hard to fix it in this file.

And I also know that it's not really being tested properly.

So I'm going to proceed with refactoring my RSS XML generation, something that I haven't really touched in a decade.