docker-tonie-podcast-sync

A Docker container that automatically syncs podcast episodes to Creative Tonies for the Toniebox.

On DockerHub: https://hub.docker.com/r/goldbricklemon/tonie-podcast-sync

This is a kind-of-minimal image around the tonie-podcast-sync CLI/Python tool by alexhartm. It allows you to upload podcast episodes (e.g. the newest ones) to your Creative Tonies on a cron schedule.

This is a purely private project and has no association with Boxine GmbH.

Why?

Truth be told, this container is pretty much a glorified containerized cron that periodically calls tonie-podcast-sync. Why did I build a container image just for that?

1. I like to run most of my stuff at home via Docker
2. I dislike to directly install and/or cron-schedule stuff (or run services) on my host machines, if it does not directly address the host itself (e.g. backups or the like)
3. Getting into the intricacies of running cron inside a Docker container is a fun weekend read/project.

Running

This can be run using a docker compose file or a standard docker run command. But you need to setup your tonie-podcast-sync settings first and pass them into the container appropriately.

Create Settings

The container is built to run tonie-podcast-sync with existing settings (i.e. which podcast(s) to sync to which Creative Tonie). It is not intended to generate those settings using the interactive CLI setup of tonie-podcast-sync (although you could get away by exec -it into the container and running the setup there).

My recommendation: temporarily pip install tonie-podcast-sync on your machine and follow the setup instructions. This generates the following setting files:

~/.toniepodcastsync
  L settings.toml
  L .secrets.toml (optional)

Transfer those files (or just the entire directory) to your Docker host. If you want to change your podcast sync settings later, either re-do those steps or just directly edit the settings.toml.

Run Container

Running the container requires you to specify the cron schedule at which the sync is running via the environment variable CRON_SCHEDULE, e.g.:

docker run [...] --env CRON_SCHEDULE="0 8 * * *" [...]

You further need to inject the settings.toml as well as your Tonie Cloud credentials. The container offers two variants to do that.

A)

I case you want to pass your credentials via the .secrets.toml file into the contianer, just bind-mount the complete .toniepodcastsync directory. This obviously requires the .secrects.toml file to be present.

The minimal docker run command would look like this:

docker run -d \
--mount type=bind,src=.toniepodcastsync,dst=/root/.toniepodcastsync,readonly \
--env CRON_SCHEDULE="0 8 * * *" \
goldbricklemon/tonie-podcast-sync:latest

B)

If you don't want to persist your credentials on your host machine in a .secrets.toml file, you can alternatively pass them as environment variables as well. Just make sure to still bind-mount your settings.toml, BUT ONLY THIS FILE, not the entire .toniepodcastsync directory.

The minimal docker run command would look like this:

docker run -d \
--mount type=bind,src=.toniepodcastsync/settings.toml,dst=/root/.toniepodcastsync/settings.toml,readonly \
--env TONIE_CLOUD_USERNAME="<your-tonie-cloud-email>" \
--env TONIE_CLOUD_PASSWORD="<your-password>" \
--env CRON_SCHEDULE="0 8 * * *" \
 goldbricklemon/tonie-podcast-sync:latest

In both cases, you can edit your settings.toml on the host (change podcasts, new creative tonie, etc.), and the bind-mount will make those changes visible to the container.

You can obviously use docker-compose as well, no surprises there. There is also the option TONIE_CLOUD_SYNC_NOW to always run a sync on container startup, which can help in testing your setup (see below).

Overview Environment Variables

Env Var	Value	Comment
CRON_SCHEDULE	A valid cron schedule, e.g. "0 8 * * *"
TONIE_CLOUD_SYNC_NOW	Any value will set this to true	If this env var is set (any value), the container will perform one sync right at start-up, before handing things over to the cron schedule
TONIE_CLOUD_USERNAME	Tonie Cloud username (e-mail)	Only required, if no .secrets.toml is passed to the container
TONIE_CLOUD_PASSWORD	Tonie Cloud password	Only required, if no .secrets.toml is passed to the container

Container Variant -noffmpeg

The regular container version comes with ffmpeg installed, to support the podcast-trimming feature of tonie-podcast-sync. This comes at the price of making the container image unreasonably large. Hence, the -noffmpeg varaint of the container with no ffmepg installed. Just don't use it if you make use of podcast trimming.

Open TODOs

• Add multi-arch support/build (gotta cover the Raspberry folks out there)
• Sanity checks on container start-up to ensure correct usage of parameters
• The container image is currently far too large for what it brings. Options:
  • Offer a non-ffmpeg version
  • Migrate to alpine (although python applications under alpine can be iffy)
• Run as non-root user

Builds Upon / Thanks To

• moritj29's tonie_api
• alexhartm's tonie-podcast-sync