A Teaser :P

[reven]

hi guys,

here's something I'm working on, looking for alpha testers in about a week or two. must be brave and be able to follow instructions to setup IIS (and have a computer with IIS...).

you can track progress on github

the first alpha won't have mobile support, but the first beta will, will be focusing on the core functionality for full webapp at first, and trying to make nextpvr as headless as possible, you can configure pretty much everything from this webconsole, except for scanning for channels (hopefully i can work with sub later to add this, i have been bugging him a lot already ).

most of the work is done for the alpha, i just have to finalize the guide screen and the dashboard and fix some browser issues. and do some more unit testing.

system requirements would be
- IIS (only for pre final, IIS Express would probably work, havent tested it)
- .net 4
- Chrome, Latest Firefox, IE 9+ (maybe limited support for IE8, no support for earlier versions of IE, its using a lot of CSS3 which isnt supported in old browsers)

a cool feature: User support, where each user can have their own
channels

• A user can number channels differently to the system channel numbers, for example I have TV3 SD and TV3 HD, on one client i would like TV3 HD to be channel 3 and on another client that doesnt support hd i would like TV3 SD to be channel 3.
  
• A user can also disable channels they don't want to see.
  

channel groups

• a user can make their own channel groups eg create a "Favourite" channel group which only they see and list their favourite channels.
  
• there are also "Shared" channel groups which users can subscribe to , so a user can just subscribe to a channel group "Sports" and not maintain it them self. So when a new sports channel becomes available the admin user would add this channel to the master "Sports" channel group then it would appear in everyones "Sports" channel group.
  

recording directories

• each user can manage their own recording directories for example I might create a directory "Docos" and i can select to record something to this directory where no other user will have access to it.
  
• There can also be multiple "Shared" recording directories where anyone can record to these directories and anyone can view them, so I might record a program everyone might want to watch to the "Shared - Movies" directory for example
  

the only client to support this so far is xbmc (slightly modified version of subs addon, will be requesting a code merge later to include the 2 minor changes needed into subs official addon) and of course this webconsole. all this user stuff works pretty well in NextPVR, where user directories just appear as "Extra Recording Directories" if running NextPVR gui, so thanks to sub to making NextPVR so flexible


ps forgive the dashboard screenshot, thats old and I've been working right to left on the pages (guide and dashboard left to go).

[ATTACH=CONFIG]34989[/ATTACH]

[ATTACH=CONFIG]34990[/ATTACH]

[ATTACH=CONFIG]34991[/ATTACH]

[ATTACH=CONFIG]34992[/ATTACH]

[Reddwarf]

Exciting! I'd like to give it a go

[KaraokeStu]

The new dashboard looks fantastic - I'm a C# developer, so am quite well versed with IIS7.5 and .NET 4.0 running on Windows 7
This front-end looks so much better than the original, so please, I'd love to help alpha/beta test

[reven]

cheers guys, the IIS stuff is pretty simple (but can scare off anyone not familiar with it), basically extract the zip into a directory say
C:\nextpvrwebconsole
open IIS, right click on websites, click add, browse to C:\nextpvrwebconsole. go to app pools make sure .net is configured for .net 4.0 and not 2.0, and done.

major requirement is having an OS with IIS7, windows 7 pro/ultimate, i don't believe home edition has it.

once again this is just for the alpha, the final will run against cassini and you wont need to do anything.

hoping to finish the tv guide page today including scheduling recordings, recurring recordings etc (spent the morning/last night working with sub on a very odd issues, which is now fixed).

that leaves the dashboard (which is mostly done) and some user specific stuff (forgot password, reset password, remember me) and i want to write a few more unit tests.

mostly interested in people testing this with multiple users to make sure user A cannot ever see anything for user B, and user A can never cancel/delete a recording for user B etc. "Shared" recordings are fair game and anyone can do anything they like to those.

however this all should work with a single user / no user where everything is just shared (theres an option "Enable User Support" which turns on/off the user specific stuff, but you can still have multiple logins to the system, just everything is shared).

and also I need to compile my nextpvr xbmc addon against raspberrypi and linux to test around my house.... dont have a linux setup atm.... (ill provide windows, linux 32 and raspberrypi builds of my slightly changed xbmc nextpvr addon when the alpha is released).

[KaraokeStu]

Sounds fantastic - I was getting a 500 error, but I'm guessing that was to do with permissions.

I've also downloaded GitHub for Windows and I'm downloading the Visual Studio 2012 Web so I can have a proper look at what's under the hood - you never know I might be able to help out with something or, at worst, learn from some of the cool stuff you're doing.

I'm from a very old-skool VB6 background, but now code in C#, just haven't got round to much of the MVC stuff yet

[reven]

basically

backend is webapi/mvc
frontend is jquery/css3/knockoutjs(using a lot of knockoutjs).

frontend loads pretty much everything through ajax via webapi (except config page which goes through mvc, design decision for this, since each config tab isnt updating the entire config, only part, which is defined by the frontend, and when i do the mobile client the configuration might have a different set of options/tabs so since this is ruled by gui figured it should be a mvc controller and not a webapi controller (webapi would support updating the entire config object).

i work with vb6 in my day job, i hate vb6, part of our webapp is still in classic asp, although ive been promised we will be upgrading it to .net soon (but they told me that when i first started 6.5 years ago...)

[KaraokeStu]

lol... sounds like my place, they told me they'd send me off to do a MCSD cource (now MCAD or whatever it is), though I'm supposed to be moving away from development and into consultancy as per my new "Business Analyst" job title

Nothing wrong with VB6.... if you're stuck in the stone ages!

That said we're working with a client who still uses a text based EPOS system, so trust me, VB6 could be worse

[carpeVideo]

Downloaded from github and passed IIS the directory GitHub\NextPvrWebConsole\NextPvrWebconsole but after relaxing permissions I get:

Server Error in '/' Application.
Parser Error
Description: An error occurred during the parsing of a resource required to service this request. Please review the following specific parse error details and modify your source file appropriately.
Parser Error Message: Could not load type 'NextPvrWebConsole.WebApiApplication'.
Source Error:
Line 1: <%@ Application Codebehind="Global.asax.cs" Inherits="NextPvrWebConsole.WebApiApplication" Language="C#" %>
Source File: /global.asax Line: 1
Version Information: Microsoft .NET Framework Version:4.0.30319; ASP.NET Version:4.0.30319.1

I am not very literate in asp.net but am I doing something glaringly wrong?

[reven]

try installing mvc4, the alpha package/zip will contain these dlls in them so that wont be required

oh and its fine to download and look at it, but i really dont recommend actually using it ATM, still incomplete (checkout the tickets on github, ive got a few more to create for the alpha as well, but you can see the progress and the pace at which im going).

[reven]

just an update, the first alpha will have an installer which will install UltiDev webserver (so you wont need IIS) or need to do any configuring.

it will also install any prerequisites needed (except NPVR of course).

I have 7 tickets left to close on github before releasing, just writing some more unit tests and trying to impove the guide speed.


tl;dr: installer that does everything for you.