New site request: firstrow.tv (1 Viewer)

[xfx]

I have tried adding FirstRow Free Live Sports Streams on your PC, Live Football Stream, Myp2p, Live MLB, Live NBA, Live NHL and more... as a Generic Site using the Generic Site Creator but it appears to be impossible to obtain the videos URLs.

So, would it be possible to have a special Site Util created for this site?

 

[doskabouter]

Can you post the config part that you have created, so I can take a peek at it?

 

[xfx]

Sure, here it is:

<Site name="FirstRow Sports" util="GenericSite" agecheck="false" enabled="true" lang="en">
      <Description>Sports</Description>
      <Configuration>
        <item key="dynamicCategoriesRegEx"><![CDATA[<a\shref="(?<url>[^"]*)">(?<title>[^<]*)</a>]]></item>
        <item key="dynamicSubCategoriesRegEx"><![CDATA[<a\sclass="accordlink"\s*href='(?<url>[^']*)'\starget="_blank">\s<img\sclass="chimg"\salt="(?<title>[^"]*)"\ssrc="(?<thumb>[^"]*)"/>]]></item>
        <item key="videoListRegEx"><![CDATA[<a\sstyle='font-size:12pt;color:limef;'\s*title='(?<Title>[^']*)'href='(?<VideoUrl>[^']*)'>]]></item>
        <item key="baseUrl"><![CDATA[http://firstrow.tv]]></item>
      </Configuration>
    </Site>

Yesterday I downloaded the source for OnlineVideos and looking at how it works it occurred to me that maybe (and this is a huge maybe) it would be nice to provide an alternate option to the "Generic Site Creator" utility.

What if it would be able to write plugins for it? So, instead of relying on a bunch of regex expressions to parse the HTML code in web sites we could be able to write simple plugins that do the parsing themselves and expose a series of lists/arrays containing all the information that is parsed through the regexs?

Having a plugin interface for OnlineVideos would allow a much more robust parsing mecanism as we would be able to work with the "generated HTML code" instead of the pages static code.
Let me explain: most pages obscure their movies' links using encrypted javascript (often hidden inside iframes) which are only available after the page has been rendered by the browser. This code is completely hidden away from the "Generic Site Creator" as it only works with the static (pre-rendered) source code.

This would not only solve this problem but would probably make OnlineVideos a lot simpler by taking away all the parsing code and moving it to separate instances (the plugins).

...hope my English is clear enough to understand what I mean...

 

[doskabouter]

I think it eventually boils down to a parser for each site, because the html is so much different...

The thing is, genericsiteutil is for the more straightforward websites, when things get complicated you will have to code your util in c#. As you have probably seen, there are a number of utils with only one or two methods in it, so, generally speaking, it is fairly easy to add an util to onlinevideos.

 

[offbyone]

You will never be able to implement a framework that has all the feature to get the links, because the methods how websites hide links are always changing (speaking with years of experience here). In order to adapt best (easiest and fastest), you need to have full C# possibilities at hand.

If you are up for a challenge, dukus once has started adding cornerstone framework for scripting (taken from mov pics I think) into OV. That way a site could be created via xml.

 

[xfx]

You will never be able to implement a framework that has all the feature to get the links, because the methods how websites hide links are always changing

That's exactly why I think OV should support a plugin mechanism so that each site is parsed through its own plugin, written in any .NET language (C++/C#/VB).
This way OV would simply load a bunch of external DLLs (each one being an specific site parser) which expose all the information that OV would expect to make things work: name of the site, language, description, list of categories/sections, sub-categories and finally a list of fully parsed links to the actual videos.

I have done quite a few HTML parsers for many projects and, as you point out, each one requires its own set of "tricks" -- making this plugin-based approach, probably, the only feasible solution to keep expanding OV support for additional (and more complex) web sites.

 

[offbyone]

I am not sure if you have fully understood the OnlineVideos API? Every single site is backed by a full blown C# class inside a dll that can even be reloaded at runtime and downloaded froma central server...

 

[xfx]

hmmm, I guess I'll have to study the API before making any further posts
Sorry...