RadioTimes XMLTV feed ending on 16 June 2016

[rickgillyon]

Originally Posted by Slugger

With the groovy scripting capabilities, you could easily handle both concerns on your list.

With XMLTV GUI I learned how to do some manipulations in Lua script. I'm sure I could figure out groovy, given time and an internet connection...

[michaeldjcox]

Just an update on how I'm finding digiguide UK data.

There is definitely a far lesser population of series/episode data than RT

Some of the more obvious cases I am suspecting the digiguide grabber or post processor.

An example where there appears to be series/episode data but it never makes it to the xmltv:

Dance Moms (REALITY SHOW)
 5* (Freeview) (30)
Wednesday 6th July 2016 on at 19:00 to 20:00 (starting this evening)
1 hour long
Sister Showdown.
Reality series following children's early showbusiness careers and their mothers. For the first time ever, sisters Maddie and Mackenzie go head to head. Payton struggles to perform a challenging number.

(Subtitles, Series 4, Episode 13)
Programme Keywords: Reality, Reality Show, Subtitles

An example where it does make it through to XMLTV:

The Big Bang Theory (SITCOM)
 E4 Plus 1 (29)
Wednesday 6th July 2016 on at 19:00 to 19:30 (starting this evening)
30 minutes long
The Creepy Candy Coating Corollary. Series 3, episode 5
Sheldon enters a competition but is annoyed when he finds out that Star Trek actor Wil Wheaton is participating, because Wil cancelled his appearance at a sci-fi convention that Sheldon had attended as a child. Wil and Sheldon make amends after Wil tells Sheldon he didn't attend because his grandma had died that day and Sheldon feels bad and lets him win. But it isn't long before Sheldon realises Wil has tricked him in order to win the competition. Meanwhile, Leonard asks Penny to set Howard up with one of her friends.

Director: Mark Cendrowski 
Starring: Johnny Galecki, Jim Parsons, Kaley Cuoco, Simon Helberg, Kunal Nayyar, Kevin Sussman 
(Repeat, Subtitles, Audio Described, 2009, 4 Star) 
Marked by the markers: 'Category: Sitcom'
Programme Keywords: Comedy, Science, Sitcom, Repeat, Subtitles, Audio Described, 4 Star

If I switch to the DG2XML skin nothing I just get a blank page so I've not been able to see what the grabber is trying to scrape.

Michael

[something fishy]

I also think that the problem is more the Digiguide to XMLTV conversion but I have never found an alternative to the grabber included with xmltv-gui.

There was some discussion of using Webgrab+ as a grabber but this seems to have died as its explicitly against DigiGuide's terms and conditions. I think somewhere I found a grabber script for the Linux version of xmltv but it's never made it into the Windows executable.

DigiGuide's corporate customers can pull an xmltv file from their servers, the sample has full episode and series info, but as a retail user not...

[Stu Gare]

Have you tried dg2xml.exe it seems to create a good xml file that Stephane's importer can handle? Is working ok for me

[rkulagow]

Originally Posted by rickgillyon

"As long as they don't change their API" is the operative phrase here. I don't know whether that's likely or unlikely. Sounds like it would break entirely:

This one still works currently, has done for years, and if issues are with the grabber we can often fix anyway. Moving over is a real PITA with lineups to setup etc. so I don't want to do it and then have to move back again. Maybe @rkulagow can give an idea how likely an API change is?

The API is versioned by the date of the API; currently we're on 20141201; there have been changes to the data, but in a backwards compatible manner. So, for example, we've added a number of fields to the data that's returned, but if an application isn't looking for the new fields, then it doesn't really have to do anything or be re-written unless you want to add support for that particular feature.

Right now we return a variable number of fields for the content rating, (some programs had no ratings, others had 15) but the ratings didn't indicate which country they applied to. That makes it difficult to filter. So, the new program response will now indicate the rating body and the rating, just like it always did, but there's new field called "country". If the grabber/ingester isn't looking for "country" then Nothing Breaks, because the body and rating field are still called the same thing. And if you're in Australia, knowing what Finland has rated a program probably isn't that interesting.

That's become more important as we expand past the US and Canada, or add other metadata, like a TheTVDB index number. If slugger's grabber isn't looking for a metadata field called "TheTVDB", then if it exists, it doesn't break the grabber.

So, API20141201 has been "stable" since at least that date. The new version of the API hasn't been put into beta yet, so there's no sunset date on 20141201.

Obviously a native JSON grabber is my preference, because then you're not throwing away information converting from JSON->XML. (The XMLTV DTD doesn't have a 1 to 1 mapping to the JSON data)

Hope this helps.

[rickgillyon]

Thanks for the clarification. I'll give it a go when I've got a spare weekend!

[rickgillyon]

Anyone here got past the Error 500 problems installing the SD plugin? Doesn't seem like much help available, worst luck, I'll probably have to pull the trigger on another year's Digiguide...

[Fuzzy]

Originally Posted by rickgillyon

Anyone here got past the Error 500 problems installing the SD plugin? Doesn't seem like much help available, worst luck, I'll probably have to pull the trigger on another year's Digiguide...

You mean the problem you just posted about a couple hours ago? Gotta have a little more patience than that man.

[rickgillyon]

Originally Posted by Fuzzy

You mean the problem you just posted about a couple hours ago? Gotta have a little more patience than that man.

Patience isn't my strong point... Another user reported it 2 days ago, no help, so I'm not liking my chances...