How to display certain text from a site into rainmeter?

[brownayy]

Hey, I'd really like to display live football/soccer scores on my desktop, but I have been unable to find a plugin which will do this.

I would like a plugin that lets me display the Championship and Premier League scores from http://livescore.com/soccer/england/ on my desktop, and I'd like it to automatically update.

What would be the best way to do this?

Thanks very much,

- Sam

[jsmorley]

What you will need is to use the WebParser plugin with Rainmeter to "parse" the source HTML of that page, to gather the information you want into measures and then display them with string meters.

If you are reasonably new to Rainmeter, you will want to start here:
http://rainmeter.net/cms/Rainmeter101

and be sure to at least go through, if not fully do, this tutorial:
http://rainmeter.net/cms/Rainmeter101-Tutorial4

Now, having said that, I warn you that parsing a very dynamic page like that by using a "screen scrape" approach, which you will have to do as there is no RSS feed of the information provided, is going to be both very challenging initially and perhaps ultimately a struggle to keep working over time. Most, although not all of the "web" things you see in Rainmeter skins are based on RSS/Atom feeds, which give you an environment where the "data" changes, but the layout and format is not important. When you are trying to parse a page directly as this site will require, it will be some work to find a regular expression that will get what you want, and will work over time as that page changes.

Not trying to discourage you, I don't doubt that there is a way to own that page and make it stand up and bark while clapping its fins. It'd be prepared to spend some time learning how regular expression work and doing a lot of debugging and cursing though.

[brownayy]

I had another look and I managed to find an RSS feed for the scores.
http://feeds.feedburner.com/rsslivescores/engchampl

I've got it displaying correctly, however the RSS feed displayer (not sure of the correct term) doesn't look right with my current theme. http://i.imgur.com/JUuXF.jpg. (the RSS feed displayer is not in that screenshot, I took that earlier.) Would you be able to point me in the right direction of an RSS feed displayer that would match my current theme? I will have a browse of deviantart to see if I can find anything.

[jsmorley]

Looks to me that if you want something that looks like that "steam" thing on the right, it would be a pretty easy skin to just make from scratch. We would be glad to help you get started and help you along the way if you are interested in rolling up your sleeves and digging in a bit.

[brownayy]

Yes, I have always been keen to learn how to create these skins myself, I had a look at the configuration files for the Steam Specials skin to see if it was possible just to make the RSS feed show up instead of the prices, but I got a bit confused.

I'll have a read of the Rainmeter 101 and see what I can learn!

Thanks

[jsmorley]

Yes, I have always been keen to learn how to create these skins myself, I had a look at the configuration files for the Steam Specials skin to see if it was possible just to make the RSS feed show up instead of the prices, but I got a bit confused.

I'll have a read of the Rainmeter 101 and see what I can learn!

Thanks

That would be a good start, as having the "basics" down and everyone speaking the same "language" helps a lot. Then feel free to ask for any help you need, folks here are generally glad to pitch in and get you over any rough spots. It does take a day or so of messing with Rainmeter skins to get the hang of how it all fits together, but then it is really not hard and you will be surprised how much fun it can be.

[brownayy]

Okay, thanks for all the help, I'll definitely come to here if I need any advice!

Thanks a lot for the help