I have written a simple command line wrapper in fish that I've been using happily for the past couple of months. It depends on httpie and checks for the presence of that command when executed. It reduces dupliction immensely when intercting with the REST API.

Here's an example of how it's used:

Getting a list of all podcasts:

airsonic -u $user -p $pass getPodcasts includeEpisodes==1

Filtering for downloaded (and therefore streamable episodes):

airsonic -u $user -p $pass getPodcasts includeEpisodes==1 | jq '.["subsonic-response"].podcasts.channel[].episode[] | select(.status == "completed")'

Initiating an episode download works like this:

airsonic -u $user -p $pass downloadPodcastEpisode id==$id

You can get the correct id parameter from the getPodcasts response above.

Each episode has a property streamId, which you can use to stream it:

airsonic -u $user -p $pass stream id==$streamId

So putting it togehter:

# select random podcast episode
episode="$(airsonic -u $user -p $pass getPodcasts includeEpisodes==1 | jq -c '.["subsonic-response"].podcasts.channel[].episode[] | select(.status == "completed")' | shuf -n 1)"
# play episode
airsonic -u $user -p $pass stream id==$(echo $episode | jq '.streamId') | play