[mythtv-users] Possible MythWeb bug: When using a power search
recording rule, ability to not record certain matches fails
Derek Battams
derek at battams.ca
Sun Oct 9 07:32:55 UTC 2005
Quoting Bruce Markey <bjm at lvcm.com>:
> Michael T. Dean wrote:
>> Nick wrote:
>>
>>> Only noticed today when I set up a rule for the remaining Formula 1
>>> races (I have a friend trackside for both upcoming races).
>>>
>>> I set up the rule on a frontend and it worked a treat, picking out all
>>> the matching programs as I'd expect. There are several repeats (a
>>> repeat of the race at a more civilised hour for those starting very
>>> early, the repeated highlights, and then the whole race repeated later
>>> in the week.
>>>
>>> I almost always use the MythWeb interface to control my recordings, so
>>> when I went to manually cancel the extra showing I didn't want
>>> recorded, nothing seemed to change, and the showings were still set to
>>> record.
>>>
>> MythWeb does not (yet) support custom record rules. You have two
>> options when using MythWeb for scheduling: 1) patch it yourself to
>> support custom record, or 2) remember your custom record rules,
>> identify
>
> All of the search types store the search info in the string for
> 'record.description'. Most likely, mythweb is replacing that with the
> description of the current showing when a change is made. If so, this
> would also be a problem when making changes to Title or Keyword or
> People rules too. Someone with PHP chops may want to fix this.
>
> Also, the underlying functionality to allow unlimited search capabilities
> is record.search=1 (kPowerSearch) which takes the SQL in the description
> into the queries in the scheduler. Search Words->Advanced uses this as
> does Custom Record. Custom Record is just a minimal wrapper interface
> to help users build valid kPowerSearch rules. It should be possible
> to build an even better interface from mythweb using HTML forms. Text
> entry would be more natural, there would be more room for explanations
> and examples and so on. Nigel at one time suggested an interface like
> Mozilla's mail filters where you set criteria a line at a time and
> click "More" to add another criteria. Each clause that needs data
> could have a widget for whatever data it needs like a spinbox for
> a list of numbers like hour 0-23, a dropdown for a list of strings
> like category_type, or a text entry box for a title. This may be an
> interesting and worthwhile project for someone who wants to contribute
> their PHP skills.
>
> -- bjm
It just so happens I'm tackling this issue right now. And my initial
thought was to do exactly what you're talking about with the HTML
forms. I was going to have drop downs for the selection lists (time,
category, etc.) and text fields for the titles, subtitles, etc. Then
you'd be able to add a line at a time (like you describe with the
'more' button). But as I got ready to implement a UI for this it
became increasingly clear that by adding all the nice UI features it
would be extremely difficult to provide the flexibility, that I feel is
required, for the power search facility.
You mentioned the Mozilla mail filters so I loaded up Thunderbird (I
assume it's the same?) to look at the UI and it does everything except
for one glaring limitation. The rules that you created, line by line,
are either all 'ORed' or 'ANDed' together. It's one or the other,
which makes their UI fairly easy to implement (take the created rules
one by one and slap an 'AND' or 'OR' between each of them and run it).
The reason I started tackling this was that I needed a rather
complicated search rule for Jon Stewart and realized that power search
would be nice to have via the web. This is the rule I need:
program.title = "The Daily Show With Jon Stewart" AND
((DAYOFWEEK(program.starttime) >= 2 AND DAYOFWEEK(program.starttime) <=
5 AND (HOUR(program.starttime) = 23 OR HOUR(program.starttime) = 0)) OR
(DAYOFWEEK(program.starttime) = 6 AND HOUR(program.starttime) = 0))
As you can see, a simple 'AND all rules' or 'OR all rules' doesn't cut
it in this case. And I suspect this to be the case for many people's
power search rules. I came to the conclusion that it'd be much easier
to just provide the text area box for people to type in their queries
(as they do in the frontend) so as to provide the most flexibility
possible. Of course, this also gets my power search web facility up
and running much quicker, which was also a major influence on my
decision. As I think about it even more, the time required to
implement a point and click HTML based facility to implement just the
rule I have above would be very long and difficult, but I'd gladly
entertain ideas if people have them.
- Derek
More information about the mythtv-users
mailing list