Spider to Suit TV Episodes

[Myth]

I Looked at making a spider to download TV episodes details from a site like http://www.TV.com, but I think the built in structure of downloading info from IMDB etc doesnt suit multiple episodes.

Would it be possible to have Spider screen that would have at least 3 selection points ie:
Search for title (eg: "Friends" )
Select the Series ( eg: Series 2)
Select the Episode ( eg: Episode S2xE04 )
Download INFO.

Along these same lines, a way to download the stills from such a site ( maybe a spider for Stills )

thanks
Myth

[Myth]

Hmmm I guess no one else is interested in this???

[Aaron]

I definitely have interest in this... I save a few TV shows and would love to have XLobby index them and display them in a "nice" way.


My concept with a TV Shows section (using tv.com data)...

Have a section that allows for a listing of TV Shows in with multiple views which allows for easy navigation by 'season' and 'episode'.

Navigation is not just by "number" but also allows display of episodes by "Title". Thus allowing views to include: banner, individual episode icons, etc with the episode "Title" and "Number" and the Season Number in the view(s).

This allows for sorting via any of the variables: episode number, episode title, etc.

View Examples:


'All Seasons & Episodes List with Banner'



"Bart Goes Crazy" Season 1 - Episode 1
"Homer Drinks Lots of Beer" Season 1 - Episode 2
"This is the Episode Title" Season 2 - Episode 1



'Per Season Episode Guide with Icons'

[Myth]

My concept with a TV Shows section (using tv.com data)...

Have a section that allows for a listing of TV Shows in with multiple views which allows for easy navigation by 'season' and 'episode'

The existing movie database suit me, already , using sub-items etc

My TV-Series layout is

Code: Select all

Friends - Series
Lost - Series
The Simpsons
|->The Simpsons - Series 01
|->The Simpsons - Series 02
     |-> S2e01 - Episode 1 Title
     |-> S2e02 - Episode 2 Title
             |->Plot etc


The only problem is I have to manually paste in the Plot, The Actors, Date etc.
If the spider could handle a site Like TV.com with at least 3 selection points ( TV Series / Series No / Episode No ) then I could update it as easily as I do with Movies using IMDB and Amazon

Myth

[hvs69]

For a spider, you need to provide a search string that will give you reasonable number of hits for a particular episode. What is the unique identifier for a given episode at tv.com? I saw something called "production code" for Seinfeld but the problem is when I put the code in the search textbox along with the series name, I get garbage hits.

Am I missing something ?

[Myth]

For a spider, you need to provide a search string that will give you reasonable number of hits for a particular episode. What is the unique identifier for a given episode at tv.com?

For the search string for the Title it would be

Code: Select all

http://www.tv.com/search.php?type=11&stype=program&qs=%searchstring%&x=0&y=0

Unique for each Title would be

Code: Select all

<a href="(?<url>/summary.html.*?/).*?"><span class="f-xbig">(?<display>.*?)</span></a>

After that the Episodes/ Full summary and Cast on each of their own pages ie for summary (PLOT) it is

Code: Select all

url=http://www.tv.com/TITLENAME/show/UniqueNumber/summary.html&full_summary=1
result=<p class="mt-0 mb-0"><br />(?<plot>.*?)</p>

For the episode the page is

http://www.tv.com/TITLENAME/show/UniqueNumber/episode_guide.html



[Myth]

If this would be too much trouble to change, is it possible to make a Plugin to do it? I cant program in C, but I can battle thru VB.

Is there anyone that coud give me some direction on how to do it?

tah
Myth

[Myth]

or not

[Myth]

Just a bump to the right

[tswhite70]

I've been playing around with spiders recently - saw this thread and thought it might be kind of interesting to work on. I couldn't spider tv.com direct because of the way it is set up and the way the spiders work. But I did find epgguide.com which lists all episodes on a single page and then maps them back to the episode page on tv.com.

I don't actually do TV episodes myself so my testing has been relatively simple. Choose the epgguide.com spider, type in the show name (Simpsons, Firefly, NipTuck etc - you may have to check epgguide.com for the proper name of the show). The spider will list all the episodes by name. For show info I'm grabbing title, episode #, air date, guest stars, plot, and the screen cap from the "watch video" window for the coverart when it's available . TV.com isn't consistent with their syntax so some plots may have a bunch of garbage at the start, but if you scroll down you'll see the real plot.

http://home.comcast.net/~twhite644/spid ... es.com.zip

Updated 4/26/2006: Updated with m_masta's regex code.

Good luck,
tsw[/b]

[m_masta]

I've been playing around with spiders recently - saw this thread and thought it might be kind of interesting to work on. I couldn't spider tv.com direct because of the way it is set up and the way the spiders work. But I did find epgguide.com which lists all episodes on a single page and then maps them back to the episode page on tv.com.

I don't actually do TV episodes myself so my testing has been relatively simple. Choose the epgguide.com spider, type in the show name (Simpsons, Firefly, NipTuck etc - you may have to check epgguide.com for the proper name of the show). The spider will list all the episodes by name. For show info I'm grabbing title, episode #, air date, guest stars, plot, and the screen cap from the "watch video" window for the coverart when it's available . TV.com isn't consistent with their syntax so some plots may have a bunch of garbage at the start, but if you scroll down you'll see the real plot.

http://home.houston.rr.com/rswhite/spid ... de.com.zip

Good luck,
tsw

I'm not having any success with this spider.
It is correctly getting the episode titles, but it is not showing any more information beyond that, i.e, you can't download info.
They changed their layout perhaps.
Since I've started messing a bit with regex, I'll see if I can figure it out. It'll be a nice little test.

[m_masta]

Here is my first attempt at a spider.
It's a modified version of the epguide spider:

url=http://epguides.com/%searchstring%/

results=<a target="visit" href="(?<url>http://www.tv.com/.*?summary.html)">(?<display>.*?)</a>

//results=<a target="visit" href="(?<url>http://www.tv.com/.*?/.*?/.*?/.*?/summary.html)">(?<display>.*?)</a>

//Title
<title>.*: (?<Title>.*?) - TV.COM.*</title>

//Plot
<div> (?<Plot>.*?) <div class="ta-r mt-10 f-bold">

//Season
Season Num: (?<Season>\d*)

//Episode
Episode Number: (?<Episode>\d*)

//Air Date
First Aired: (?<AirDate>.*?) &nbsp

Copy and paste into notepad and save as a spider.
Let me know how it works.

edit: ... hmmm the quote above is not showing the spaces properly for plot. Oh well

[jowaldo]

I definitely have interest in this... I save a few TV shows and would love to have XLobby index them and display them in a "nice" way.


My concept with a TV Shows section (using tv.com data)...

Have a section that allows for a listing of TV Shows in with multiple views which allows for easy navigation by 'season' and 'episode'.

Navigation is not just by "number" but also allows display of episodes by "Title". Thus allowing views to include: banner, individual episode icons, etc with the episode "Title" and "Number" and the Season Number in the view(s).

This allows for sorting via any of the variables: episode number, episode title, etc.

View Examples:


'All Seasons & Episodes List with Banner'



"Bart Goes Crazy" Season 1 - Episode 1
"Homer Drinks Lots of Beer" Season 1 - Episode 2
"This is the Episode Title" Season 2 - Episode 1



'Per Season Episode Guide with Icons'

I would LOVE to have something like this!

[tswhite70]

Spider updated with m_masta's code...

http://home.comcast.net/~twhite644/spid ... es.com.zip

good luck,
tsw