How to filter audio podcasts from iTunes Search API? - api

Question

By searching for podcasts with the iTunes API (http://www.apple.com/itunes/affiliates/resources/documentation/itunes-store-web-service-search-api.html) the result contains both audio and video podcasts. Is there any way to retrieve only audio podcasts from the API?
Thanks in advance :-)

Answer 1

From the documentation it doesn’t seem as if filtering audio and video podcasts is possible; however, you could loop through the resulting items and check whether each item is audio or video for filtering. You can do that be finding additional information from the RSS feed or by making another call to iTunes using the subscribePodcast url (see example).
using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Linq;
using System.Text;
using System.Net;
using System.Web.Script.Serialization;
using System.Xml.Linq;
using System.IO;
namespace ConsoleTest
{
class Program
{
static void Main(string[] args)
{
//Searching for Windows Weekly
string url = "https://itunes.apple.com/search?term=Windows%20Weekly&media=podcast&attibute=audio";
string json = FetchHTML(url);
JavaScriptSerializer s = new JavaScriptSerializer();
var result = s.Deserialize(json);
var audioOnly = new List();
foreach (var item in result.Results)
{
if (!IsVideo(item.TrackId))
{
audioOnly.Add(item);
}
}
foreach (var au in audioOnly)
{
Console.WriteLine(au.TrackName);
}
Console.ReadLine();
}
static bool IsVideo(string id)
{
string req = "https://buy.itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZFinance.woa/wa/com.apple.jingle.app.finance.DirectAction/subscribePodcast?id=" + id + "&wasWarnedAboutPodcasts=true";
string xml = FetchHTML(req,true);
bool isVideo = false;
var re = XElement.Load(new StringReader(xml)).Elements("dict").Elements("dict");
bool next = false;
foreach (var e in re.Elements())
{
if (next)
{
//This is the is video value
isVideo = e.Name.LocalName.Trim().ToLower() == "true";
next = false;
break;
}
if (e.Value == "is-video")
{
next = true;
}
}
return isVideo;
}
static string FetchHTML(string url,bool doItAsITunes = false)
{
string htmlCode = "";
using (WebClient client = new WebClient())
{
if (doItAsITunes)
{
client.Headers.Add("user-agent", "iTunes/9.1.1");
}
htmlCode = client.DownloadString(url);
}
return htmlCode;
}
}
public class SearchResult
{
public SearchResult()
{
Results = new List();
}
public int ResultCount { set; get; }
public List Results { set; get; }
}
public class Item
{
public Item()
{
GenreIDs = new List();
Genres = new List();
}
public string WrapperType { set; get; }
public string Kind { set; get; }
public string ArtistID { set; get; }
public string CollectionID { set; get; }
public string TrackId { set; get; }
public string ArtistName { set; get; }
public string CollectionName { set; get; }
public string TrackName { set; get; }
public string CollectionCensoredName { set; get; }
public string TrackCensoredName { set; get; }
public string ArtistViewUrl { set; get; }
public string FeedUrl { set; get; }
public string TrackViewUrl { set; get; }
public string PreviewUrl { set; get; }
public string ArtworkUrl60 { set; get; }
public string ArtworkUrl100 { set; get; }
public float CollectionPrice { set; get; }
public float TrackPrice { set; get; }
public string CollectionExplicitness { set; get; }
public string TrackExplicitness { set; get; }
public string DiscCount { set; get; }
public string DiscNumber { set; get; }
public string TrackCount { set; get; }
public string TrackNumber { set; get; }
public string TrackTimeMillis { set; get; }
public string Country { set; get; }
public string Currency { set; get; }
public string PrimaryGenreName { set; get; }
public List GenreIDs { set; get; }
public List Genres { set; get; }
}
}

Answer 2

Yes. In regular serach you get everything:
https://itunes.apple.com/search?term=jack+johnson
But you can add some params to request for example (for your case)
&entity=song
So the request will be:
https://itunes.apple.com/search?term=jack+johnson&entity=song
For more look at Searching seaction in this docs