A TV Guide program that reads an XMLTV file and presents it in an elegant easy-to-use interface.
Current Status
The current version is 0.1.
Download
- Source Tarball - 0.1, 17kb, gzip, the source
- Dynamically Linked Binary - 0.1, 24kb, gzip, a dynamically linked binary for x86 only
System Requirements
The public version of atvguide runs only on a modern version of Unix (Solaris, Linux, BSD, etc.) with the X Windows System.
Unix version:
- GTK+ 1.2 or above
- Glib 1.2 or above
- libxml2 2.6.0 or above
If you are using Linux, you most probably meet the requirements above. They're all fairly standard libraries for a Linux system.
atvguide should also compile on Mac OS X (Darwin) if you install the developer kit and X11 for Darwin (available on Apple's website).
Compiling the Source
If you want to compile the source yourself, you need development versions of the libraries listed above. You also need GNU m4 or a compatible program to generate the makefiles.
To compile:
- Unpack the source archive.
- Run ./configure
- Run make
- Run make install
This will install into /usr/local. If you want to install somewhere else, change step 2 to: ./configure --prefix=/path/to/prefix
Getting the TV Listings
1.
Unfortunately, obtaining the XMLTV files that contain the TV listings is not an easy task. That is the job of the XMLTV program, of which I have no control. For complete documentation, see their website. I will summarize here.
2.
To use XMLTV you must have Perl and a lot of Perl modules. Before starting, confirm you have Perl. We'll worry about the modules later.
3.
If you use a recent major Linux distro, you can probably install an appropriate XMLTV package and your distro will take care of the modules.
4.
If you don't have a recent major distro, you'll have to download the source and compile yourself. See the XMLTV page for complete documentation. When installing, it will complain about missing Perl modules. Find and install those modules by using CPAN Search.
5.
Once XMLTV is installed, you will have to configure your grabber program. To configure, type: tv_grab_code --configure where code is the (usually) two letter code of your grabber. Once again, see the XMLTV site. A text-based wizard will walk you through the configuration.
6.
If you live in North America, XMLTV will prompt you during the configuration to register with Zap2it. Zap2it only gives you a three month subscription and they spam you with surveys. You've been warned. After the three month subscription expires, you must answer a survey, or get a new account and re-configure your grabber program (see above).
7.
Once you're configured, run: tv_grab_code --days 3 --output tvguide.xml where code is the same grabber code you used above. This command will download 3 days worth of listings and stick them in tvguide.xml. You can change those values if you wish.
8.
Now you can view the listings (see below). Later to update your listings, repeat the step above. You may wish to add that to your crontab so it happens automatically.
Viewing the Listings
Once you have followed the steps above to obtain an XMLTV file, run: atvguide tvguide.xml . If you saved the listings in a file other than tvguide.xml, reflect that change here as well.
License
This program is licensed under the terms of the GNU General Public License, which means:
This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.
This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.
You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software Foundation, Inc., 59 Temple Place, Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111-1307 USA
Using xmltv.lib
This section applies to programmers.
xmltv.lib comes with the source and provides a simple API to parse XMLTV listings. Feel free to use it with your own program, in accordance with the GNU General Public License. See the header files. They're very short and sufficiently commented.