This post originated from an RSS feed registered with Java Buzz by dion. Original Post: Pruning past iTunes podcast content Feed Title: techno.blog(Dion) Feed URL: http://feeds.feedburner.com/dion Feed Description: blogging about life the universe and everything tech Latest Java Buzz Posts Latest Java Buzz Posts by dion Latest Posts From techno.blog(Dion)

I keep running across the same feature that I wish I had in my applications. As someone who subsribes to a lot of content, I really need to be able to cap the amount in some feeds.

E.g. I want to say "This planet feeds gets a ton of traffic, so just keep a rolling max of 100 so I don't turn around and see it full with 4000 entries"

This problem is even more important when subscribing to content such as pod/vidcasts. Before I look around, my hard drive is screaming about my podcast directory.

Since iTunes didn't seem to help me out, I ended up writing a tiny Ruby script that would allow me to nuke any content longer than X weeks. This is far from perfect, as I would like to set it up on a podcast basis. Some podcasts I like to keep around. Others, I don't really care about, and I only listen to when on long trips and I have exhausted the rest :)

The bulk of the script is simply:

Find.find(PODCAST_DIRECTORY) do |path|
	if FileTest.file?(path) && older_than_given_weeks?(path)
		puts "Deleting '#{path}' which had the mod time of '#{File.mtime(path)}'"
		File.delete(path)
	end
end

iTunes, aggregators, please let me setup queue maximums :)