Building a Podcast Player: Implementing the PodcastIndex API with Kotlin and Retrofit

Introduction

Lately I have been looking into free api’s for searching podcasts and ran into PodcastIndex.org. A great resource/service that supports an open and independent podcasting ecosystem.
I signed up at podcastindex.org, read their api documentation, and downloaded their Postman collection, ready to get started and implement their api into my own app just to find out that it was slightly more challenging and requires a little bit more puzzling to get things up and running than the average other API I have been using since the requests made to the api requires one to add some header data for authorization.
Since how to do that and set up your code to get you up and running than just providing a standard implementation with and api key and api secret I thought I’d write a summary of the basics needed to get a basic working implementation.

As a little side note:
Adam Curry, also known as and baptised by Joe Rogan as the “PodFather”, the original and first ever podcaster, is a co-founder of the Podcast Index organization. He is considered one of the pioneers of podcasting, having launched one of the first podcasting shows, “The Daily Source Code”, in 2004. He co-founded the Podcast Index organization in 2020, which aims to provide an open, decentralized index of podcast RSS feeds, free from corporate control and censorship. Curry has been actively involved in promoting and…