Automatic importing of XBMC items

[jtap]

Hello,

Just wanted to say thanks for making this great program and integrating it into everyone's favorite HT frontend!  I have been messing around with adding a few movies and some music to Vox Commando and it really works great.  My only caveat...I have over 2,000 movies and about 10 times that amount of songs.  Was just wondering if you have found a way yet to do sort of an "import" of the XBMC library? 

I know on the XBMC iPhone app it automatically pulls all of the movies, music, etc and even the covers - so there must be something in the api that would allow this?

As much as I have contemplated it...I just can't see myself doing my entire library by hand.    Perhaps I can coerce you with a nice donation?   cheers

[jitterjames]

Yep, I am working on it.  I made some progress today.  I've actually got the code working, but have found it to be a bit slow to load so I have been trying to optimize it.  I'll try to get something out in the next day or two.  If I can't speed it up, I'll just post it as is.

A donation would be welcome of course, but I am working on this anyway.

you really have 1000s of movies?  Wow.

[jitterjames]

give this a whirl.  it's still very basic but it should work.  there is a GenXML button on the main interface.  Open that and then click Movies and it will generate an xml file in your application folder called xbmcMovies.xml.

Create a command using that file as the payloadXML.  That file will have the names of the movies as the phrases and the path to the file as their corresponding values.  It currently uses partial phrases by default so you can say only part of the movie name to trigger it.

To just play that movie you can create an action of type XBMC and enter this command string:

PlayFile({1})

where {1} will be replaced by the path to the movie.

I would actually prefer to use just the name of the movie and have it find the path of the file only when you ask for it because this would be much faster and save memory, but I'm not there yet.  Same will go for artists etc.

edit:  look a few posts down for the file...

[Wanilton]

James,

Ok in this 3 generation of XML files, it worked correctly, however when building the command
reading of files is okay, but try to make a save or a save as, appears a series of
dialog box TRUE and hangs after restart only the movie file was loaded, the other
XML payloads are empty, no data, very likely because they are not saved, because the error
appointed.
In the 0795 version save this ok, I tried ... I returned to the previous version and everything was fine ...

Grateful,
Wanilton

[jitterjames]

do you mean this:

when you edit a payload file and then click save, you get a dialog box that says "true" over and over?

I will fix it today, that was a side effect of some debugging I was doing.

[jitterjames]

ok, this should fix that minor bug when saving payloadXML files

[Wanilton]

Now it's perfect, I suggest that the button generating the file by going to Options tab XBMC, seems more appropriate.

[jtap]

Sorry, but where is the download link?

[Wanilton]

Jtap, two post up...LOOK...

[jtap]

Oh my bad.  It's small and im viewing on a TV

[jitterjames]

Now it's perfect, I suggest that the button generating the file by going to Options tab XBMC, seems more appropriate.

Thanks for the suggestion.  I was originally going to put it there.  But then I had both a technical reason (the way my classes are organized in my code) and also a logical reason that will make more sense once I develop the idea further.

I think I may actually want to make it a completely different program to do this, so that you could call it periodically to update Vox's xml files.  Also, I will probably not just use it for XBMC but will have  a number of different xml files that can be updated for data from different programs, such as WMC, mediamonkey, itunes and XMBC (and maybe others one day).

Anyway, for now it is easier to leave it where it is, but we will decide later on, when the idea is better developed.

[jitterjames]

Oh my bad.  It's small and im viewing on a TV

I don't much like the way this forum handles attachments, but what can you do?  I guess the answer is go and change the forum code, but that doesn't sound like much fun...

[jtap]

Any plans on including songs in the exporting of XML files?  I am having some trouble playing music by artist only - but I will tinker some more with it over the weekend.  It doesn't look like they are being added to the playlist...

[Wanilton]

Friend, xml files already includes albums and artists, plus films, it remains only for series of tvs and songs, which is more complicated I guess..

[jitterjames]

I am having some trouble playing music by artist only - but I will tinker some more with it over the weekend.  It doesn't look like they are being added to the playlist...

are you using the artist option from the options/xbmc tab, or are you using GENxml and then creating a command that uses the payloadXML and the exported file?

try using the options/xbmc tab with the version 0.795 (and a half) found here:

http://voxcommando.com/forum/index.php?topic=55.msg279#msg279