• Documentation
• Topics
• Where does Podcaster’s information come from?

Where does Podcaster get episode information from?

In the tutorial, we used the front matter of each episode post to specify that episode’s release date, episode number, filename, size and duration.

However, Podcaster can work out all this information for you, so long as:

• you name each episode post correctly, including its date, episode number and season number (if it has one)
• you tell Podcaster the location of your episode audio files, so it can calculate the size and duration of each file
• you name each episode audio file correctly, including its episode number and season number (if it has one)

Naming your episode posts correctly

If you name your episode posts correctly, Podcaster can work out the episode number (and season number, if applicable) from the filename, so that you don’t have to specify date, episode.episodeNumber or episode.seasonNumber in the front matter.

Here are some examples of correctly named episode posts:

2021-11-04-ep1-yesterdays-enterprise.md
2021-11-12-ep2-the-house-of-quark.md
2021-11-19-ep3-lineage.md

And here are some examples with season numbers:

2024-04-14-s1e1-the-power-of-the-daleks.md
2024-04-21-s1e2-spearhead-from-space.md
2024-04-28-s1e3-terror-of-the-autons.md

The specific filename patterns

As is usual with Eleventy, you can specify the date by putting it at the start of the filename in the format YYYY-MM-DD. You separate the date from the rest of the filename with a hyphen.

To specify an episode number for your episode post, after the date and the hyphen put e, ep or episode- followed by the episode number. And after that, put whatever you want. The pattern is not case-sensitive.

To specify a season number and an episode number for your episode post, after the date and the hyphen, put s followed by a the season number, then e followed by the episode number. After that, put whatever you want. The pattern is not case-sensitive.

Telling Podcaster where your episode files are stored

Podcaster expects your episode files to be stored in one of two places:

• in a local directory named episode-files, relative to your site’s input directory
• in an S3-compatible storage bucket

You can give Podcaster access to your s3-compatible storage bucket by specifying its details in your Eleventy configuration file, like this:

eleventy.config.js

import Podcaster from 'eleventy-plugin-podcaster'

export default function(eleventyConfig) {
  …
  eleventyConfig.addPlugin(Podcaster, {
    s3Storage: {
      accessKey: '<your-access-key>',
      secretKey: '<your-secret-key>',
      bucket: '<your-bucket-name>',
      region: 'us-east-1',
      endpoint: 'https://example-cdn.com'
    },
  })
  …
}

What Podcaster does with your episode audio files

Podcaster will go through your local or remote episode audio files and calculate their size and duration. It will store this information in the data cascade as episodeData. But you don’t need to worry about those details: Podcaster uses episodeData to calculate episode.size and episode.duration for you.

How to name your episode files correctly

If you name your episode files correctly, Podcaster can work out the episode number (and season number, if applicable) from the filename and can use that information to match the file with its corresponding episode post, so that you don’t have to provide episode.filename in the front matter.

Here’s how to name your episode files so that Podcaster can match them with their episode posts:

• If there’s no season number, provide the episode number as the first isolated number in the filename (where isolated means separated by hyphens, other punctuation, or spaces).
• If there is a season number, provide the season number as s<number> and the episode number as e<number>, with or without a space in between. The pattern isn’t case-sensitive.

Here are some examples: