How to parse rss-feeds / xml in a shell script

Question

I'd like to parse rss feeds and download podcasts on my ReadyNas which is running 24/7 anyway.

So I'm thinking about having a shell script checking periodically the feeds and spawning wget to download the files.

What is the best way to do the parsing?

Thanks!

Answer 1

Sometimes a simple one liner with shell standard commands can be enough for this:

 wget -q -O- "http://www.rss-specifications.com/rss-podcast.xml" | grep -o '<enclosure url="[^"]*' | grep -o '[^"]*$' | xargs wget -c

Sure this does not work in every case, but it's often good enough.