new TheaterListPlugin info

[srchuck]

Here's a screenshot of the new config dialog (accessible from GBPVR's Config app) for your viewing pleasure!



Feel free to post comments and suggestions!

( FYI: This isn't a mockup screenshot )

[sub]

Thats looking very nice. Well done.

[joshley]

Does the grabber grab the listings into XML format? I might write a grabber for Scoot.co.uk for British cinemas.

[joshley]

Does the grabber grab the listings into XML format? I might write a grabber for Scoot.co.uk for British cinemas.

[srchuck]

Joshley,

Yes, the grabbers will grab the listings in XML format. The final structure of the XML is not decided yet.

Grabber plugins get the listings of shows and any other information they care to gather, and return it to the main plugin as an XmlNodeList object. I'll be releasing the plugin interface specs and the required SDK (just a plugin interface dll, really) when some of this stuff gets finalized.

I would recommend going ahead with writing the core logic of a grabber! If you like, I can send you the DLL + source for the HTML parser I'm using for the Fandango grabber, if you want to do screen scraping to get your listings.

SrChuck

[joshley]

The source for the HTML parser would probably save a lot of unnecessary work, just a little adaption here and there! I am definately thinking of screen scraping, Scoot looks quite easy to parse. They're almost giving it away!
Thanks SrChuck
josh

[srchuck]

Josh,

You can find the binaries (now with docs! for the HTML parser I use (licensed under the LGPL) at this location:

http://gcm.dnsalias.org/HTMLparser-bin.zip

To use it in your project, just reference HTML.dll in your project and do something similar to below.

<table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0"><tr><td>Code Sample </td></tr><tr><td id="CODE">
using HTML;

....
{
.... Your code here ....
ParseHTML htmlParser = new ParseHTML();
ParseHTML.Source = page; // page is a string with the contents of the page to parse
.... Your code here ....
}
[/QUOTE]

I've added a MSDN-style compiled HTML help file to the distribution, and I've removed the source for now. If you still want the source, it'll be available from:

http://gcm.dnsalias.org/HTMLparser-source.zip

[joshley]

SrChuck,

Cheers! I'll have a look at that as soon as I can. I use Sharp Develop so that's perfect
I'll have a play over the coming weekend and see what I come up with, thanks very much for that!

joshley

[jorm]

srcchuck,

looks nice. Far cry from my initial command line. Great work.

[srchuck]

Thanks everyone for your support! I've really been enjoying working on the plugin in my spare time, with the exception of figuring out how to do plugins for plugins.. that was really kicking my posterior for a while! But, that's working nicely now!

I'm working on Microsoft HTML Help for the HTML class; progress is good. I'll repost the link to the HTML parser class with docs when I've got that done. I imagine I'll have that finished some time tonight, perhaps tomorrow.

I may remove the source from the HTML help class and distribute it separately, to help reduce the possibility of multiple different versions of the HTML.dll being used by different grabber plugins.



Thank yous go to sub and to jorm and to everyone that made this all possible!

SrChuck