[mythtvnz] epgsnoop/xmltv-proc-nz/tv_grab_nz-py

[Aaron Pelly]

On 07/07/14 11:14, Aaron Pelly wrote:
> There are also a couple of things I'd like to tweak.
TL;DR If you want/know/care you can give advice about NZ EPG data 
enhancement.

So, I've made significant progress on this front, but I'm no Python 
programmer. I'd like some advice from the list.

The short story is that I've updated xmltv-proc-nz to use tmdb api v3 
and to use tvdb. I also cloned tv_grab_nz-py and changed it to use 
mhegepgsnoop and xmltv-proc-nz. It's a bit band-aids and string at the 
moment, but over the next couple of weeks I'll make it look acceptable 
and work nicely. It will appear on github. (Assuming the BSD licence 
allows credited, derivative works; I am presume it does but haven't 
checked yet.)

Data storage advice:
I do not know why Hads wrote xmltv-proc-nz (but I wouldn't have got this 
far if he hadn't!) but it has some config that it attempts to get from 
the web. This makes sense, but I have no interest in maintaning a web 
service for it. The things that you might want to change, like 
categories, show names etc. I have currently coded in the script. This 
is plain wrong. I have three ideas about where to put these, but I'm not 
sure what's best.

MySQL: Easy to implement, but less easy to edit. Requires multiple 
tables. Not sure if user tables are allowed in mythconverg
.mythtv/config.xml: Easy to implement and fairly easy to edit, not sure 
if user data is allowed. User hints can be stored in the XML
.xmltv/some_other_file: Sounds cleanest, but it's another file to setup 
during installation, which is already a painful time.

xmltv grabber / mythfilldatabase advice:
Will mythfilldatabase run automatically during a recording? Preliminary 
testing indicates that mhegepgsnoop trashes an in-progress recording, 
but that could be a coincidence. More testing is required.

xmltv grabber / mhegepgsnoop advice:
There's a chicken and egg thing going on with channel configuration 
here: mhegepgsnoop cunningly looks in mythconverg/channel for configured 
channels, but xmltv expects you to choose your channels then myth seems 
to insert them in the channel table for you, if it can. This insertion 
appears to be broken for me at the moment, but that is a feature to 
address another day anyway. The question really is, is it acceptable for 
a new grabber to only return data for channels it finds already in the 
channel table, or should it use an external config file like 
tv_grab_nz-py does?

I'll finish doing this for myself anyway, but if anyone else is 
interested in the results of my small effort, now is a good time to 
speak up.

Aaron.