Parse Feedburner?

[Lightz39]

Would it be possible to create a feed in rainmeter from something like this: http://feeds.feedburner.com/WhatsNewOnNetflix?format=xml I was attempting it but it wasn't working for me. I don't know a whole heck of a lot about parsing though.

[Kaelri]

It looks like a standard RSS feed, so it shouldn't give you any unexpected trouble. There's a script that you can use as a universal feed reader (although I need to update it soon, it should still work for you). Or, if you'd rather try your own non-Lua solution, there's a WebParser tutorial here, as well as any number of feed skins that you can reverse-engineer. Parsing feeds is a pretty common task, so there's no need to reinvent the wheel.

[jsmorley]

Sure. You can tear apart just about any RSS skin to get a sense of how it works to use WebParser to parse an XML/Atom feed like that.

The long and the short of it is that you will create a "parent" WebParser measure with the URL on it, and a RegExp= that parses the site into as many StringIndex (captures) as you want. Then you use a series of "child" WebParser measures to pick off each StringIndex one at a time by using URL=[ParentMeasureName] and StringIndex=X (where X is the StringIndex number from the parent measure you want to get into the child measure.

Then you just build meters that use those child measures as the MeasureName= option on them, and you are done.

The most complicated bit when you are new at it is the RegExp= to parse the site into StringIndexes. What I would suggest there is to get RainRegExp which can be a lot of help in getting that part working.

Take an initial run at it after looking at a skin or two from deviantART that read RSS feeds, and if you are still stuck, we can take it to the next level here.

[Lightz39]

Thanks guys.

[Lightz39]

Alright need some help here. In the tool you provided I can successfully parse the lines I want and have them returned as string indexes. When I try to put them into rainmeter nothing shows up. I probably mistyped something or something along those lines but I can't figure it out.

Code: Select all

[mFeed]
Measure=Plugin
Plugin=WebParser
Url=http://feeds.feedburner.com/WhatsNewOnNetflix?fmt=xml
RegExp="(?siU)<item>.*<description><p><strong>(.*)&lt.*img src="(.*)".*/></a><br />(.*)&lt.*a href=.*a href="(.*)".*</description>"
StringIndex=1

[mCoverArt]
Measure=Plugin
Plugin=WebParser
Url=[mFeed]
StringIndex=2

[mDescription]
Measure=Plugin
Plugin=WebParser
Url=[mFeed]
StringIndex=3
;==========================================================================
[Title]
Meter=String
MeasureName=mFeed
FontSize=100
FontColor=FFFFFF
X=0
Y=0

[Kaelri]

You didn't do anything wrong. You just need to add:

Code: Select all

[Rainmeter]
DynamicWindowSize=1

(The [Title] meter technically has zero width and height when the skin is loaded. And without DWS=1, the skin never expands to fit the new text.)

[Lightz39]

Thanks.

[Lightz39]

One more quick question. How can I take a link to a image and have that image display in a meter?

Example I want: http://cdn-0.nflximg.com/en_CA/boxshots/ghd/70202129.jpg

To show the actual image on my desktop. I tried meter=image but that didn't display anything.

EDIT: I figured it out. I had to place Download=1 in my measure.

[Kaelri]

Set the WebParser URL to the image address, then add Download=1. The measure will return a path to the downloaded image's location (usually in your Temp directory, unless you choose another location).

EDIT: Ah, good good. :)

[Lightz39]

Another problem. Netflix has 5 link types for its covers. boxshots/tiny, boxshots/small, boxshots/large, boxshots/ghd and boxshots/ghd_ste. The link type that my feed returns is small. I want to substitute it to ghd so it will download the HD cover instead.

First I tried add substitute="small":"ghd" to my measure that returns the string where the image is. That worked but when I set it to download the image it downloaded the small one and not the large one. So I figured I'd try it in the measure where my RegExp is and that didn't even change the string. It remained small. Any ideas on how I can accomplish this?

I want http://cdn-0.nflximg.com/en_CA/boxshots/small/70202129.jpg to be http://cdn-0.nflximg.com/en_CA/boxshots/ghd/70202129.jpg