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Adding Content Using a Feed Course

If you are hosting content on your local servers, use feed courses to automatically populate track content in a feed Course page based on the Atom feed URL and details you specify.

To automatically populate course and track content using feed courses:

1. Log in to iTunes U as an administrator or another user with editing access.

2. Navigate to the Welcome page where you want to add content using a feed course.

3. Click Edit Page in the Tools area.

4. Choose From Template “Default Atom Feed Course” from the Create Page pop-up menu in the section where you want to add a new page.

   iTunes U adds your new page and displays the Edit Atom Feed Settings page.

5. Provide details about the feed course using the fields and options provided:

   • Atom feed URL. Type an Atom Syndication format feed URL. To verify that entries within the feed are unique, iTunes U checks entry identifiers (ID). If the entry IDs do not exist, iTunes U then checks the entry titles. If iTunes U encounters duplicate entries, iTunes U rejects the feed.

   • Signature. To enable download authentication, choose Append SHA-256 Signature from the Signature pop-up menu. iTunes U appends a SHA-256 Signature to both the podcast and enclosure URLs. Specifically, iTunes U appends: time=${TIME}&userID=${USER_IDENTIFIER}&signature=${SIGNATURE}, where:

     • ${TIME} is the time, in seconds, when the URL was generated. Specify time as the number of seconds from the epoch (midnight January 1, 1970), normalized to GMT.

     • ${USER_IDENTIFIER} is the unique identifier (userIdentifier) passed to iTunes U in the identity string for the user who created the Atom feed course.

     • ${SIGNATURE} is the SHA-256 signature based on the string containing the first two arguments ('time=${TIME}&userID=${USER_IDENTIFIER}'), signed with the shared secret used in your transfer script.

   • Security. If the Atom feed URL is protected, choose HTTP Basic Authentication or HTTP Digest Authentication from the Security pop-up menu and specify a username and password in the fields provided. iTunes U uses the credential information, together with the access levels you define within your site, to authenticate both the podcast feed URL and the actual content when users attempt to download content.

   • “Check for changes.” To check the feed for updates on a daily basis, choose Daily from the Frequency pop-up menu and provide an email address in “Feed owner email.” iTunes U uses the email address to report errors when the daily check of the Atom feed URL fails for any reason. When these periodic checks fail 3 times in a row, iTunes U stops checking the feed and no longer updates the course content.

   • Status. Displays status details regarding the last time iTunes U attempted to update the feed course. iTunes U displays either date and time information for the last time new content was added to the group from the specified Atom feed URL or an error message if iTunes U encountered a problem while attempting to check the Atom feed URL for changes.

6. Click Save.

   iTunes U displays the feed Course page.

7. Click Logout.

Notes:

• If your Atom feed contains the iTunes <itunes:explicit> tag, iTunes U applies the advisory label setting and displays an advisory graphic for the course or track as appropriate. For example:

  • No <itunes:explicit> tag indicates that the explicitness of the content is unknown. iTunes U does not apply an advisory setting.

  • An <itunes:explicit> tag with a “no” value indicates that the content is not explicit. iTunes U applies the setting, but does not display an advisory graphic. Apple recommends using a “no” value when a course or track is not explicit but should not have the Clean icon advisory graphic because the course or track does not contain alternate versions of content from an explicit course or track ('yes’). Use “no” to implicitly indicate content is clean.

  • An <itunes:explicit> tag with a “yes” value indicates that the content is known to be explicit and you want iTunes U to apply an “explicit” setting. iTunes U applies the setting and displays the Explicit icon advisory graphic.

  • An <itunes:explicit> tag with a ‘clean’ value indicates that the content is known to be non-explicit and you want iTunes U to apply a “clean” setting. iTunes U applies the setting and displays the Clean icon advisory graphic. Apple recommends that you use ‘clean’ only if the group or track contains alternate versions of content from an explicit course or track (“yes”).

  If you use the tag at the channel level, iTunes U displays the advisory graphic in the Course page. If you use the tag on an item, iTunes U displays the advisory graphic in the track list for the specific track.

• iTunes U copies relevant information and data from your Atom feed and automatically populates your feed course content based on the Atom feed URL information and the details you specify. When users subscribe to the feed, they are subscribing to the copied information and data, not your Atom feed directly. Because iTunes U does not use your your Atom feed directly, iTunes U cannot update Course page content at the same time the Atom feed is updated. If you choose Daily from the Frequency pop-up menu, iTunes U can update the feed course content on a daily basis. If you want to force an update you can:

  • Send a request to http(s)://deimos.apple.com/WebObjects/Core.woa/PingPodcast/site.name with an id, handle, or feedURL parameter. You can pass the parameter on the query string for an HTTP GET, or pass it as an HTTP POST parameter using a content type of application/x-www-form-urlencoded. For example: https://deimos.apple.com/WebObjects/Core.woa/PingPodcast/itunesu.edu?handle=876546541.

  • Use the iTunes U UpdateFeed Web Service operation. For more information, see “UpdateFeed.”

As the site administrator, you can also use iTunes U Web Services to create a feed course, including the URL to the feed, and automatically populate content within a course. For more information, see “Adding Content Using iTunes U Web Services” and “AddCourse.”

The following is an example of an iTunes U Web Services document using AddCourse, and specifying that the new course is a feed course:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<ITunesUDocument>
  <Version>1.1.4</Version>
  <AddCourse>
    <ParentHandle>876546541</ParentHandle>
    <ParentPath>parentpath value</ParentPath>
    <TemplateHandle>templatehandle value</TemplateHandle>
    <Course>
      <Name>Atom feed course name</Name>
      <CourseType>Feed</CourseType>
          <ExternalFeed>
             <URL>http://www.itunesu.edu/atomfeedpath.xml</URL>
             <OwnerEmail>john.doe@email.com</OwnerEmail>
              <PollingInterval>Daily</PollingInterval>
              <SecurityType>None</SecurityType>
              <SignatureType>None</SignatureType>
          </ExternalFeed>
      <AllowSubscription>allowsubscription value</AllowSubscription>
    </Course>
  </AddCourse>
</ITunesUDocument>