myTrailers local showtimes extension

[TimmyT]

wow this really sounds promising... looking forward to see and test it!

another great site for switzerland is http://www.outnow.ch

Thanks a lot
TimmyT

[falkyre]

Originally Posted by guilhem

Thanks for you work.

For France, the best site is www.allocine.fr.

But we have already work on a grabber ( forum : http://www.mp-fr.com/forums/index.ph...opic=2201&st=0 ) for a plugin.

So, i think the better way is that we merge with you.

We can help you to integrated the french parser. We need for this an explanation about data management (XML files, data base, ...).

Thanks

I've taken a look at what was done for the French and you have a full featured plugin that is much farther along than I have in mine. Right now, I am in the middle of working on screen scraping and creating regular expression matching.

Here's my high level design goal:

• Create a plugin style of parsing engine that will use seperate sets of code for each location. So there would be a plugin for USA/Canada, one for France, one for Germany etc...
  
  Rather than grab the data while MP is running, I envision creating a data importer that will run outside of MP and populate a database with theater info, movie info, actor info, etc... This is how the now defunct Meedio worked with it's Movie Showtime plugin
  
  Once the database is populated, then extend the myTrailers plugin to utilize the information in the database and tie movie information to what the myTrailer's plugin handles.
  

Now understand I am just starting on this, getting my head wrapped around the screen scraping and regex stuff (it's been a while on my programming). Once I get those working, then I will start on the importer engine. I figured getting a good section of Web Sites to look at first would be a good start. Yahoo provides quite a bit but probably not everything out there.

For your French plugin, is the data parser seperate from the actual GUI component?

It looks like there is someform of xmlgrabber component involved as well (understand English is my native language and I don't speak French all that well...have to rely on Bablefish )

[guilhem]

To be correct, in France, there were 2 plugins which get the local show time. So we plan to merge them. But it is not actually done.

So in the 2 french plugin we have nearly the same design :
- there is a parser by country. This parser is an exe. We can use it by the setup or by an refresh button in GUI.
- datas are stoken in xml files ( The parser build the xml files)
- The GUI read this xml files to drow the GUI.

The only diffrence that your datas are in the data base... But it's more integrated in MP. So i think is a good solution.

Another topic, we have imagine that our plugin can show other time information. If we make a parser which grabb theater or concert information, we can represent it as movies informations ( without the trailler :wink: ). But if we integrated this in MyTrailler, i think it's a bit confusing....

[key master]

Hey guys, the author of that Meedio movie times plugin checking in 8)

I haven't had a chance to check out mediaportal yet, but after reading about your efforts, I wanted to offer a download to everyone. I have actually developed a "stand alone" version of the Meedio plugin that doesn't require Meedio - but with no 10-foot interface. It's basically a command-line program that outputs everything to an XML file. It's working pretty well right now, feel free to cherck it out. I will post the source code to it soon, but here's where the executable is:

http://movietimes.home.comcast.net

Countries currently supported: Australia, Belgium, Canada, France, Germany, Netherlands, United Kingdom, and the United States. (Norway and Spain possibly soon...)

Feel free to use it and build a plugin around it - I would hate for someone to have to reinvent the wheel. I also included multi-country support so people can download movie times from multiple countries at once...

Looking forward to what MediaPortal and your plug-in has to offer...

Good luck,
-Jim

Originally Posted by falkyre

Hi all,

I'm going full on with redoing the myShowTimes plugin and have talked to ZipperZip, the author of myTrailers to get permission to add to the myTrailers plugin. That is what I am going to do.

Now what I need from you....What web pages do you use to get your local showtimes. USA and Canada already work, I'm going to look at the code from t he Meedio plugin that captures the data for Germany, Switzerland, UK, France (and some others I can't recall at the moment) and convert those into the MP world. So can others provide....

URL
Name of City to do a search on
Some form of Zip Code/Postal code if required.

I intend on building the parsing modules for each location and after those work, then add them into the myTrailers plugin...

Thanks!

[ASiDiE]

Jim, Welcome to the Forums! I will Check this out later when I get home.

[mzemina]

Jim,

I edited the xml files and ran the exe and got the following error to show up:


The cmd window looked like this after I canceled it:

C:\movies>mtsa
MovieTimesVBNET - Stand Alone, 4.0 Beta 4
Created by key master

Locating config file...
Found: C:\movies\config.xml

Reading config file...
Logging activity: C:\Movies\log.txt

Downloading requested information, please wait...


Unhandled Exception: System.Exception: Cannot create ActiveX component.
   at Microsoft.VisualBasic.Interaction.CreateObject(String ProgId, String Serve
rName)
   at mtsa.Common.SaveWebPageToFile_XML40(String filepath, String url, Boolean b
ypass)
   at mtsa.AppleTrailers.GetTrailer(String movietitle)
   at mtsa.AppleTrailers..ctor(MediaLibrary& newMediaLibrary, LogFile& newLogFil
e, String TrailerMovieTag, String TempFolderPath, String TrailerFolderPath, Bool
ean DownloadFile, Boolean HighQuality)
   at mtsa.mtsa.GetMovieData(LogFile& oLogFile, MediaLibrary& oMovieLibrary, Str
ing sCountry, String sLocations, String sTheaters)
   at mtsa.mtsa.Main()

The log is:

MovieTimesVBNET - Stand Alone (4.0 Beta 4)

Apr 18, 2006 @ 04:27:30 PM

[SETTINGS] C:\Movies\locations.xml
[SETTINGS] C:\Movies\log.txt
[SETTINGS] C:\Movies\Temp\
[SETTINGS] 7
[SETTINGS] True
[SETTINGS] C:\Temp\MovieTimesVBNET-SA\Media\Posters\
[SETTINGS] High
[SETTINGS] C:\Temp\MovieTimesVBNET-SA\Media\Trailers\
[SETTINGS] High
[SETTINGS] True
[SETTINGS] C:\Movies\moviedata.xml
[SETTINGS] C:\Movies\moviedata.xsd

[SETTINGS] C:\Movies\locations.xml:
-------------------------
<?xml version="1.0" standalone="yes"?>
<LocationList>










	<LocationDetails>
		<Country>United States</Country>
		<Locations>74112</Locations>
		<Active>AMC Southroads 20|Cinemark Tulsa</Active>
	</LocationDetails>
</LocationList>
-------------------------

Checking for internet connection ...
Internet connection found.

Reading locations file...
Completed.

[YahooNorthAmerica] Downloading Theater List for 04/18/2006 ...
[YahooNorthAmerica] Downloaded.

Creating Movie List for "AMC Southroads 20"
	"Ask the Dust"
	"Benchwarmers, The"
	"Inside Man"
	"Phat Girlz"
	"Pink Panther, The"
	"Scary Movie 4"
	"Shaggy Dog, The"
	"She's the Man"
	"Take the Lead"
	"Thank You for Smoking"
	"Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada, The"
	"Tsotsi"
	"Tyler Perry's Madea's Family Reunion"
	"V for Vendetta"
	"Wild, The"
[YahooNorthAmerica] Completed.

[YahooNorthAmerica] Downloading Theater List for 04/19/2006 ...
[YahooNorthAmerica] Downloaded.

Creating Movie List for "AMC Southroads 20"
	"Ask the Dust"
	"Benchwarmers, The"
	"Inside Man"
	"Phat Girlz"
	"Pink Panther, The"
	"Scary Movie 4"
	"Shaggy Dog, The"
	"She's the Man"
	"Take the Lead"
	"Thank You for Smoking"
	"Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada, The"
	"Tsotsi"
	"Tyler Perry's Madea's Family Reunion"
	"V for Vendetta"
	"Wild, The"
[YahooNorthAmerica] Completed.

[YahooNorthAmerica] Downloading Theater List for 04/20/2006 ...
[YahooNorthAmerica] Downloaded.

Creating Movie List for "AMC Southroads 20"
	"Ask the Dust"
	"Benchwarmers, The"
	"Inside Man"
	"Phat Girlz"
	"Pink Panther, The"
	"Scary Movie 4"
	"Shaggy Dog, The"
	"She's the Man"
	"Take the Lead"
	"Thank You for Smoking"
	"Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada, The"
	"Tsotsi"
	"Tyler Perry's Madea's Family Reunion"
	"V for Vendetta"
	"Wild, The"
[YahooNorthAmerica] Completed.

[YahooNorthAmerica] Downloading Theater List for 04/21/2006 ...
[YahooNorthAmerica] Downloaded.

[YahooNorthAmerica] Completed.

[YahooNorthAmerica] Downloading Theater List for 04/22/2006 ...
[YahooNorthAmerica] Downloaded.

[YahooNorthAmerica] Completed.

[YahooNorthAmerica] Downloading Theater List for 04/23/2006 ...
[YahooNorthAmerica] Downloaded.

[YahooNorthAmerica] Completed.

[YahooNorthAmerica] Downloading Theater List for 04/24/2006 ...
[YahooNorthAmerica] Downloaded.

[YahooNorthAmerica] Completed.

[IMDB] Getting movie details ...
	"Ask the Dust"
	"Benchwarmers, The"
	"Inside Man"
	"Phat Girlz"
	"Pink Panther, The"
	"Scary Movie 4"
	"Shaggy Dog, The"
	"She's the Man"
	"Take the Lead"
	"Thank You for Smoking"
	"Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada, The"
	"Tsotsi"
	"Tyler Perry's Madea's Family Reunion"
	"V for Vendetta"
	"Wild, The"
[IMDB] Completed.

[ImpaPosters] Searching for posters ...
	"Ask the Dust"
	"Benchwarmers, The"
	"Inside Man"
	"Phat Girlz"
	"Pink Panther, The"
	"Scary Movie 4"
	"Shaggy Dog, The"
	"She's the Man"
	"Take the Lead"
	"Thank You for Smoking"
	"Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada, The"
	"Tsotsi"
	"Tyler Perry's Madea's Family Reunion"
	"V for Vendetta"
	"Wild, The"
[ImpaPosters] Completed.

[MediaLibrary] Searching for existing media in "C:\Temp\MovieTimesVBNET-SA\Media\Trailers\"
[MediaLibrary] Search complete.

[AppleTrailers] Searching for trailers ...
	"Ask the Dust"

Any ideas what the problem is?

Mike

[falkyre]

Hey jim,

Thanks for popping in. I was/am actually designing my plugin based around your source design but strictly in C# (well, maybe Iron Python). But if there already is a stand alone, I'll check it out and see if I can use the XML to populate a database and then tie into myTrailers. If so, wow, my work is pretty much easy then!! When I was a myHTPC and then Meedio user, I loved the work you did. Hopefully you can bring that excellent work to Media Portal!

Sean

[key master]

I forgot to mention that the program requires the MS .NET Framework 1.1 or 2.0 installed on your system. You have one of those versions installed, right?

Looking at the log file you posted, the apple code uses a function that (I believe?!) doesn't work in windows 95 and 98 - never tested it. Are you running in either of those? If so, disable the downloading of trailers in the config.xml to see if that's what's causing it. If so, maybe I could make a work-around.

-Jim

Originally Posted by mzemina

Jim,

I edited the xml files and ran the exe and got the following error to show up:

[key master]

Sean,

Thanks, I appreciate it! I figured I would try to save you some work It still requires an interface... what I made is just a "back-end" program that you are free to use for your plug-in in whatever language you choose - up to you.

-Jim

Originally Posted by falkyre

Hey jim,

Thanks for popping in. I was/am actually designing my plugin based around your source design but strictly in C# (well, maybe Iron Python). But if there already is a stand alone, I'll check it out and see if I can use the XML to populate a database and then tie into myTrailers. If so, wow, my work is pretty much easy then!! When I was a myHTPC and then Meedio user, I loved the work you did. Hopefully you can bring that excellent work to Media Portal!

Sean

[mzemina]

key master - I just tried it out on a laptop that has an OS of XP. I'll check to see what *if any .net framework is installed on this computer.

Mike