xTop10 - Preview and Suggestions please

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I have a utility that takes my last entered Top 10 TV episodes and displays them as a category in my menu page and I was wondering if anyone would want this, and then I got thinking, why not do this for other categories too, so you could have the last 10 movies added, the last 10 photos, the last 10 recipes, etc etc.

Currently I implement this like this...



The new episodes section (when it has the focus) scrolls through the last 10 episodes added by air date.

So....

This does rely on either you have a valid date for each entry in the category (any non valid dates are skipped). This date could be the date entered in the db, or in my case the date the show was aired (which I always add to my db). Or we could just scrape the first 10 entries, or we could sort then scrape... lots of possibilities.

I add my movies, games and tv stuff in ANT so for me adding dates and retrieving them is easy - not sure how DVD Profiler handles dates - this is for you to tell me.

So before I subject this to you all, I wanted to get a feel of what you want, if you want it, how you want it etc etc.

[sharp_1]

I think this is a great idea.

Both DVD Pro v2.x and v3.x use the date information as "<purchasedate>2006-09-11</purchasedate>", notice the date format.

[S Pittaway]

sounds quite a good idea to me

i would let people set a field name for the date added, its a bit more flexible...

[defrag]

Thanks for the feedback..

OK, so what we need then is a plugin form that you...

1. select the cat
2. select the field to do the filter (reading from the cat?????),
3. select the filter type (date, integer etc)
4. new cat name (or default to orignal_name plus "top10".xml)
5. goto 1
6. test button!!!

now here's the rub... and I broached this with Steven ages ago.. there is currently no way to order the way in which plugins run, so realistically you could get this to refresh from a command either on screen load or something, which is what I currently do on my server so it runs after I do a restart.

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Both DVD Pro v2.x and v3.x use the date information as "<purchasedate>2006-09-11</purchasedate>", notice the date format.

Date formats will be parsed by .Net for validity, so hopefully regionalisation shouldn't be an issue. I store my dates as 11 September 2006 (UK format) but it shouldn't really matter

[P3rv3rt B3ar]

I just hope xPerT timestamp format could also be among understood date/time variations. thanks.

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I just hope xPerT timestamp format could also be among understood date/time variations. thanks.

as if I'd leave you out

we will discuss later

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Started to play with this now...

Could someone make available some DVD Profiler cats? I can send you an email to send to if you PM me.

Or anything that you think might be useful?

P3rvBear: can you send me example of your timestamp?

Cheers all

[P3rv3rt B3ar]

P3rvBear: can you send me example of your timestamp?

it is simply what XL returns for

Code: Select all

datetime>

variable, so, i believe it is:

Code: Select all

MM/DD/YYYY HH:MM:SS

Yeah lazy bear made bad choice, cause u really cant sort directly within XL based on that...

[sharp_1]

Here is my DVD Profiler collection database for you to use.

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Thanks all - gonna get busy now

[P3rv3rt B3ar]

Yeah lazy bear made bad choice, cause u really cant sort directly within XL based on that...

Id really like to correct that mistake of mine, if u can wait a day or two, there might be last minute change to the timestamp format...

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No worries b3ar, not going to rush this one, not quite as simple as first thought. But flow is now...

1. List cats
2. User selects cat
3. plugin list basic cat info, number of items, cat type (movie, music, tabby etc)
4. plugin lists all available fields from item (information fields shown differently) split by type - music cat has 2 item types, album and track
5. user selects field type (plugin validates against field)
6. user selects sort order (ascending/descending)
7. user selects number of rows to return
8. plugin creates new cat

step 8 is where I am and will be for a while

Where does you're timestamp live? In the item in the cat?