event_details broken

[SteveTyrakowski]

I have several records where Event_details is generating an error message and it is likely why my recurring recordings no longer work as well. I also cannot export recordings successfully if I wanted to start over with a new install.

Here is an example of the error:

2016-08-24 02:51:43.794 [ERROR][14] Unexpected error parsing EPGEvent xml: System.NullReferenceException: Object reference not set to an instance of an object.
at NUtility.EPGEvent.Parse(String xml)
2016-08-24 02:51:43.794 [ERROR][14] xml:
<Event><Oid>1000205</Oid><Title>Grandfathered</Title><SubTitle>s01e04.Deadbeat</SubTitle><Description>2015-10-20: After Jimmy misses Edie's second birthday party, he decides to throw her a big bash at his restaurant to make it up to the family. When Sara's brother shows up, he brings the party to a screeching halt by confronting Jimmy about leaving Sara to raise Gerald on her own.</Description><ChannelOID>7763</ChannelOID><StartTime>2015-10-21T06:09:00.0000000Z</StartTime><EndTime>2015-10-21T07:09:00.0000000Z</EndTime></Event>

I have a few hundred of these that I want to fix.

Brief history: I tried to edit the event_details of one recording of Saturday Night live where they aired a Prince tribute after he died and the Guide data had some repeat episode, so I wanted to have the correct description in the database. Well I ran the SQL update and stupidly forgot the "WHERE OID = nnn" clause trashing every record. I asked for help too late and the backup copies of the recordings had rolled past a salvageable version. I did have a backup of the npvr.db3 file that was a few months old so I was able to salvage about 80% of the data.

I then used vidImport to get descriptions of the files I had in my recordings directory and wrote a program to update the event_details on the bad records. I was able to fix the filenames of all my records but apparently the data I constructed for event_details is missing something.

If you can give me a clue what is wrong with the entry above, I can probably fix the other records. I have tried to attached the full log zip file but I am getting an error so I only zipped the Nrecord.log file and attached it.

Thanks for any direction you can give me.
Steve Tyrakowski

[sub]

It looks like you used <Oid> instead of <OID>.

[HarryH3]

And NEVER, EVER, EVER edit the database without FIRST making a copy of it!

[sub]

Yep...

[SteveTyrakowski]

It looks like you used <Oid> instead of <OID>.

Thanks.

Wow, I never figured that the xml was case-sensitive. And of course it was stupid to modify the database without backing it up, but it was such a simple little one-liner and being infallible it all happened before common sense kicked in<g>.

That change seems to have let NPVR recognize the event_details on those records now, but I'm still not getting my recurring recordings to work. I'll check it again after a day or two to see if the natural EPG updates might handle it differently than emptying and updating the EPG. I cancelled and re-entered a few recurring and they don't seem to generate any pending.

Thanks again,
Steve T.

[mvallevand]

Case sensitivity isn't the only rule you broke. I see you don't escape characters you enter in there http://stackoverflow.com/questions/10919...-documents, ie

Even Cowgirls Get the Black & Blues
Key & Peele

must use &amp: and not just &

Martin

[jcole998]

Well I ran the SQL update and stupidly forgot the "WHERE OID = nnn" clause trashing every record.
Steve Tyrakowski

Hi, Steve. Just a helpful hint when using SQL: Before using SQL UPDATE, test the UPDATE's "WHERE=" clause by first trying it with a SELECT statement. It sure has saved me a lot of grief!

[SteveTyrakowski]

Case sensitivity isn't the only rule you broke. I see you don't escape characters you enter in there http://stackoverflow.com/questions/10919...-documents, ie

Even Cowgirls Get the Black & Blues
Key & Peele

must use &amp: and not just &

Martin

Thanks. I tried to update those entries with &amp but for some reason when Delphi updated the field it must have changed that to some invisible special character. I would inspect the converted string prior to the SQL update command and it shows the &amp as the replacement for &, but somewhere in the update process it got changed. I didn't bother trying to fiddle with it anymore so I just changed all the & to 'and' and was done with it.

Now my recurring recordings are working again, so hopefully that fixed all the errors in the event_details field and I'm ready for the new season.

Thanks to everyone who offered help.

Steve Tyrakowski