Question about XMLTV Import Tool: categories

[svalmorri]

Hello,

I am wondering about how does XMLTV Import Tool (StephaneM's) define the airing categories. From what I can see it's looking into the <category></category> xml tag. Can someone confirm that?

I found that I can define multiple tags into the 4 predefined Movie,Sport,Serie,News main categories by separating them with commas: it works fine.

However not all entries in my xmltv guide are showing the <category></category> extra info: would it be possible to update the importer in order to look into the title and description of the airing as well?

Thanks!

[StephaneM]

Hi,

Originally Posted by svalmorri

I am wondering about how does XMLTV Import Tool (StephaneM's) define the airing categories. From what I can see it's looking into the <category></category> xml tag.

Yes the Importer is looking categories into the <category> node.

However not all entries in my xmltv guide are showing the <category></category> extra info: would it be possible to update the importer in order to look into the title and description of the airing as well?

If you have the possibility of contacting the grabber author to fix it (of course if the information is available).

Otherwise the Importer will not look into the title / episode title or description to find categories.

The alternative for you would be to use a script to create "category" nodes based on the show description / title.

Regards,
Stéphane.

[svalmorri]

Hi,

thanks for the reply.

The grabber I'm using is coming out of the box from the standard XMLTV package, no customizations at all. It's working well for most of the shows, unfortunately the category info is not available for all airings.

Wouldn't it be easier to implement such filter in the XMLTV Importer program?

If <category> is in, then use that one.
If no <category> then look into the <title> and <desc> and mark it as either movie, sport, news or series.

[StephaneM]

Originally Posted by svalmorri

The grabber I'm using is coming out of the box from the standard XMLTV package, no customizations at all. It's working well for most of the shows, unfortunately the category info is not available for all airings.

Each grabber in the XMLTV package has some options to get more data / tweak the data. You should read the documentation for the Italian grabber (it is supposed to grab data on more than one site and you can request more data to be grabbed).

Also, if the category is to be found in the title and/or description of the show (that is you can read and not guess the category), this category should be extracted from it and placed into one or more category node. That's why you can contact the grabber author about this, you'll find his e-mail in the documentation for the grabber.

Wouldn't it be easier to implement such filter in the XMLTV Importer program? If <category> is in, then use that one. If no <category> then look into the <title> and <desc> and mark it as either movie, sport, news or series.

Yes and no, if the Importer had to adapt to each XMLTV file because they do not follow the XMLTV DTD, there would be too many options for it to be usable simply.

As I said, a very simple script can be used to populate a category node based on your data : as this is specifically targeted to your data it's the better way to go.

I can supply such a script for you if you want.

Regards,
Stéphane.

[svalmorri]

Thanks for having taken the time to reply!

I was already using xmltv in full info mode (--slow) however I didn't realize that I was using the wrong backend (the one providing less information among the ones available). I have reverted to a newer xmltv build with an improved epg provider and now it's fine, I get most of the categories.

Thanks again.