myTrailers local showtimes extension (5 Viewers)
- Thread starter falkyre
- Start date
United Kingdom
- Thread starter
- #62
It will include whatever the old meedio showtimes app does. key_master (from meedio) created a standalone application that does the downloading of showtimes and creates an XML that I will parse. It handles Canada, US, UK, Australia, France, Belgium and some others.
Falkyre
Falkyre
I see that Google has ability to show movies based on zipcode. Not sure if this google link would work in other parts of world: http://www.google.com/movies?near=74112&date=3&sort=1
Can sort by movie rating: sort=2, or by movie title: sort=3, by theater name: sort=4, or by distance from theater: sort=0
Can also change the date that you want to see what is playing by changing the date=
Can sort by movie rating: sort=2, or by movie title: sort=3, by theater name: sort=4, or by distance from theater: sort=0
Can also change the date that you want to see what is playing by changing the date=
- Thread starter
- #64
Yah, I checked that out when I first started the plugin. Then keymaster supplied the code to do all of the parsing of various sites for the movie times and decided to use that. When I looked at it initially, Google only supplied showtimes for US and Canada so it wouldn't work for MP seeing that there are WAAAY more users throughout the world that use MP. The app keymaster supplied to do the parsing covers more than US and Canada and works well so we'll stick with that.
Here's a small update. I've rewritten the plugin to be a process plugin. It will work much like the Zap2It plugin as it will go out and do updates while MP is running or update when MP starts. So far, I've got the configuration portion 90% done.
Falkyre
- Thread starter
- #66
An Update...
Here's the latest...
99% Done the configuration portion. Need some cleanup and some added options (such as the ability to turn on some debugging). I also need to do some standard error checks for bad config files but that's pretty straight forward.
I'd like to thank the other plugin authors out there that provide their source code to look at. Without it, this plugin would be a mess of old time, non threaded, code. Following the code done for the myBurner and Zap2It plugins have really shed some light on threading etc and now I've got a pretty good idea how that works.
One question to all those that are waiting for this plugin. The application that does the scraping of the pages for Showtimes has the ability to download the trailers and posters. My initial intention was to just tie into the existing myTrailers plugin and utilize the way that it gets access to trailers etc. Would it make sense to do this or to utilize the app to download the information and write my own GUI? (Understand, I'm an inherently lazy coder ha ha so the less work the better)
The next steps are to get the movie showtimes to be updated inside of MP. That's this weeks tiny baby steps of coding (understand, I get an hour here and an hour there to code...).
Falkyre
Here's the latest...
99% Done the configuration portion. Need some cleanup and some added options (such as the ability to turn on some debugging). I also need to do some standard error checks for bad config files but that's pretty straight forward.
I'd like to thank the other plugin authors out there that provide their source code to look at. Without it, this plugin would be a mess of old time, non threaded, code. Following the code done for the myBurner and Zap2It plugins have really shed some light on threading etc and now I've got a pretty good idea how that works.
One question to all those that are waiting for this plugin. The application that does the scraping of the pages for Showtimes has the ability to download the trailers and posters. My initial intention was to just tie into the existing myTrailers plugin and utilize the way that it gets access to trailers etc. Would it make sense to do this or to utilize the app to download the information and write my own GUI? (Understand, I'm an inherently lazy coder ha ha so the less work the better)
The next steps are to get the movie showtimes to be updated inside of MP. That's this weeks tiny baby steps of coding (understand, I get an hour here and an hour there to code...).
Falkyre
falkyre - GREAT NEWS!
Downloading of trailers and posters sound like a good idea! I think it wise to allow this to be configurable for those that don't want this feature or maybe it could be a problem on their computer.
Downloading of trailers and posters sound like a good idea! I think it wise to allow this to be configurable for those that don't want this feature or maybe it could be a problem on their computer.
- Thread starter
- #68
I was thinking along the same lines. The option is there so allow for it. Alrighty, I'll add that in then.
- Thread starter
- #69
Update!!!
Hey all,
I'm done the first half of this two part plugin. The plugin consists of a process plugin that will do all of the background work. It uses an external app to pull information from various web sites to provide an XML file that has all of the information about the movie currently playing. This external app can also download trailers and posters for the movies.
The process plugin has the capability to do a manual update via it's configuration dialog, do a forced update once MediaPortal is launched and then do an automatic update while MP is running.
I am starting the second part of the plugin that is the GUI portion. I am definitely not an artist so it will be a very basic design, most likely following the design of the myTrailers plugin. I have not decided yet whether to roll my own GUI or piggy back on the myTrailers one. That's my first decision.
Thanks for your patience.
Hey all,
I'm done the first half of this two part plugin. The plugin consists of a process plugin that will do all of the background work. It uses an external app to pull information from various web sites to provide an XML file that has all of the information about the movie currently playing. This external app can also download trailers and posters for the movies.
The process plugin has the capability to do a manual update via it's configuration dialog, do a forced update once MediaPortal is launched and then do an automatic update while MP is running.
I am starting the second part of the plugin that is the GUI portion. I am definitely not an artist so it will be a very basic design, most likely following the design of the myTrailers plugin. I have not decided yet whether to roll my own GUI or piggy back on the myTrailers one. That's my first decision.
Thanks for your patience.
Keep it going
Just wanted to add my encouragement for this plugin - it is the one thing I miss from the old myhtpc days.
I know there is a lot of work involved, so if there is anything someone with no coding knowledge can do to help - testing, etc, please let me know.
Just wanted to add my encouragement for this plugin - it is the one thing I miss from the old myhtpc days.
I know there is a lot of work involved, so if there is anything someone with no coding knowledge can do to help - testing, etc, please let me know.