iPod Updating podcasts with Applescript

[Bedawyn]

_Please_ tell me someone knows how to do this. I want to set up calendar events that will update only specific podcasts on the schedule I want, rather than the "all or nothing" option that the iTunes scheduler gives you. I know how to make Calendar run a script, but can't figure out the script itself. I know the verb is "updatePodcast", but apparently that doesn't take a noun, and I haven't been able to work out how to tell it which podcast to update. Doug's scripting site hasn't been helpful, and this was the only thing I could find elsewhere -- and apparently that only works if you manually select the podcast you want (in which case, you might as well just manually update it and forget the script entirely).

 

[Bedawyn]

Bumping in case anyone has an answer by now, because I'm still looking -- and still pulling my hair out. UpdatePodcast doesn't take arguments, Refresh gives a "doesn't understand the command" error message, Download balks at the colon without quote marks around the URL and gives a "doesn't understand the command" message with quote marks. I can't believe that I'm the only person who wants a middle ground between updating ALL my podcasts on the same schedule and keeping manual track of two dozen different update schedules.

What I'm looking for is a way to tell an applescript to update the named (not selected) podcast and ONLY that podcast.

 

[slothbear]

updatePodcast redux

Did you ever figure how to update one podcast with updatePodcast? I've been working on the same project recently.

The only way I've found so far was suggested in an iLounge topic. The key was -- you can't update a "podast" object -- since there is none. You have to grab an existing track from the podcast and call updatePodcast on the track. If you don't have a track .. . dunno. Maybe you can use URL_track instead? I haven't tried that.

tell application "iTunes"
updatePodcast (first track of playlist "Podcasts" whose album is "Rubyology")
end tell

 

[slothbear]

har har har on me

I'm laughing at myself. I just re-read the post on iLounge, and realized it's you that posted the solution there. hoho.

Yesterday, the code worked fine for me. Today, same code, tells me that iTunes doesn't have a playlists property. bit rot. I'm using rb-appscript though. I'll switch back to AppleScript and regroup.

app("iTunes").playlists['Podcasts'].file_tracks[its.album.eq("The Archers")].first.updatePodcast​