Custom lua script and UK grabbers not working

Discussion of Version 3 and developing lua grabbers
Duck
Posts: 4
Joined: Wed Aug 04, 2010 12:40 am

Custom lua script and UK grabbers not working

Post by Duck » Wed Aug 04, 2010 1:08 am

Hi, I made my own lua script using another as a template. It is for adding "Film: " to the title. Not having the space was starting to bug me so this one includes it...
AddFilm.zip
Updated script, not cleaned up (add changes to official release?)
(1.2 KiB) Downloaded 2061 times
I also had to change it so it also checked that the category is "Movies" for it to work. That's because radio times seems to be down (I had no EPG today, what's up with that?) so I had to use DVBGuide.exe to get a XML EPG off the airwaves. "Movies" seems to be the official category for films that they use when they broadcast it.

Is there any script for cutting down an imported XML file to reduce the number of channels? Just to make loading the EPG into programs a lot faster.

Plus I couldn't get radio times or bleb to download today. Error I get for every single channel available for Radio Times is "Radio Times returned a zero sized reply for channel ..." Do you know if this is a temporary problem? The data seems to be completely empty http://xmltv.radiotimes.com/xmltv/92.dat

BTW, what does the use cache do? Seems that it stops it working because with it on, the timeline doesn't update with the 1st day being today, and the last day 2 weeks away. But with is off there is only empty EPG if there is a problem like a day missing it's data.

Ok thx and thx for the XMLTV GUI app :)

alanbirtles
Site Admin
Posts: 495
Joined: Mon Sep 06, 2004 4:44 pm

Re: Custom lua script and UK grabbers not working

Post by alanbirtles » Wed Aug 04, 2010 7:29 am

radiotimes seems to be down at the moment. The cache setting uses a cached file rather than downloading a new file.
To remove channels write a channel post processor (like ukrt_altchids_rt.lua) and just return XGUI.OK rather than the channel for the channels you want to delete (I'm not sure i've tested this but it should work).

alanbirtles
Site Admin
Posts: 495
Joined: Mon Sep 06, 2004 4:44 pm

Re: Custom lua script and UK grabbers not working

Post by alanbirtles » Thu Aug 05, 2010 12:53 pm

listings are back up now

onionfx
Posts: 4
Joined: Thu Aug 05, 2010 1:35 pm

Re: Custom lua script and UK grabbers not working

Post by onionfx » Thu Aug 05, 2010 2:39 pm

Seems to be broken again :(

Have they changed the format of their listings?

Can get at channels.dat and there seems to be enough data if you visit the page directly.
But my 3.12 grabber is saying zero size list and has been for a day or 2 now :(

Sam

onionfx
Posts: 4
Joined: Thu Aug 05, 2010 1:35 pm

Re: Custom lua script and UK grabbers not working

Post by onionfx » Thu Aug 05, 2010 3:20 pm

Re-ran it there now and its working :)

onionfx
Posts: 4
Joined: Thu Aug 05, 2010 1:35 pm

Re: Custom lua script and UK grabbers not working

Post by onionfx » Thu Aug 05, 2010 3:23 pm

Ran it again from the command line and zero sized replies....

Maybe more investigations my end

onionfx
Posts: 4
Joined: Thu Aug 05, 2010 1:35 pm

Re: Custom lua script and UK grabbers not working

Post by onionfx » Thu Aug 05, 2010 4:07 pm

Renamed my RT cache directory and it seems OK now.

Pity I lost my channels in the process of finding it :(

Never mind this app is great!

Duck
Posts: 4
Joined: Wed Aug 04, 2010 12:40 am

Re: Custom lua script and UK grabbers not working

Post by Duck » Thu Aug 05, 2010 8:26 pm

A moderator on the media portal forums said that they "have changed the "handshake" that is needed to access the xml feed".

You can refresh the listings for BBC1 in a web browser... http://xmltv.radiotimes.com/xmltv/92.dat

Sometimes it's there, sometimes it's not.

yyyyyy
Posts: 3
Joined: Wed Aug 11, 2010 10:53 am

Re: Custom lua script and UK grabbers not working

Post by yyyyyy » Wed Aug 11, 2010 10:57 am

Apparently, it 's not working again.
Cleared the cache (removed the cache folder and subfolders), but still "zero sized reply" for each channel :(
Are they deliberately doing this to exclude XMLTV grabbers such as this one ?
I guess I could write my own, which would then crawl through all the pages, but that would put a much higher load on their page.

alanbirtles
Site Admin
Posts: 495
Joined: Mon Sep 06, 2004 4:44 pm

Re: Custom lua script and UK grabbers not working

Post by alanbirtles » Wed Aug 11, 2010 11:07 am

I would suspect technical issues rather than deliberate blocking, the xmltv feed is explicitly provided for xmltv grabbers to prevent people from scraping their web pages. I think the problem is that the xmltv feed generator pulls the listings out of the database for the main site and if that database is changed then the generator breaks and its a low priority to get it fixed. I don't think we can complain too strongly as they are providing the service for free with no advertising

yyyyyy
Posts: 3
Joined: Wed Aug 11, 2010 10:53 am

Re: Custom lua script and UK grabbers not working

Post by yyyyyy » Wed Aug 11, 2010 11:28 am

Oh, I wouldn't complain for a free product.
Just thought they were blocking it deliberately, instead of technical issues.
If it 's a technical issue, I suppose it might be fixed soon.

Duck
Posts: 4
Joined: Wed Aug 04, 2010 12:40 am

Post by Duck » Wed Sep 15, 2010 2:46 am

Don't see why you cant complain. Every time I've tried to download radio times data in the last few days, it hasn't been working :(

Maybe someone should write a program to scrape their web pages for EPG data. Not that I know how to do that...

alanbirtles
Site Admin
Posts: 495
Joined: Mon Sep 06, 2004 4:44 pm

Re: Custom lua script and UK grabbers not working

Post by alanbirtles » Wed Sep 15, 2010 8:52 am

you can email them and tell them its not working but do so in a calm and polite manner. if they get too many ranting complaints they may just decide turning the service off is less hassle

wizgnome
Posts: 2
Joined: Wed Sep 15, 2010 9:18 am

Re: Custom lua script and UK grabbers not working

Post by wizgnome » Wed Sep 15, 2010 9:25 am

Its been up and down for a few weeks, I am now down to 11 days of listings for my Myth-TV box. :(
Has anyone made them aware that there is a problem or know what has happened?
I would send them an email - if no one else has, but don't know who to contact.

Duck
Posts: 4
Joined: Wed Aug 04, 2010 12:40 am

Re: Custom lua script and UK grabbers not working

Post by Duck » Wed Sep 15, 2010 4:41 pm

Only address I could find was radio.times@bbc.co.uk from another forum.

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