Xananax Posted July 25, 2015 Author Share Posted July 25, 2015 I would suggest making scrapers external scripts, so they can be customized, switched, and so on, at will. The reason for that is that I love Launchbox, and since BigBox is on rails, I've been thinking of ditching Kodi and use Launchbox exclusively to browse and watch my movies and series. I know it's not at all the direction and so I wouldn't request features targeted towards it; Launchbox is great at what it does, it would be a dilution of purpose. It's not really needed anyway; I can already consider movies roms and vlc an emulator, make some use of custom fields for series, and I'm good to go (haven't tried yet, but that's what I'm thinking; maybe that suggestion would help too). What I do miss, though, is the ability to query imdb/thtvdb. Allowing me to write my own script for that would open a wealth of new customization options. I do realize that both decoupling scrapers and embedding a scripting language is probably not easy, and I realize as well that this is probably not a very useful/popular feature, so I don't hope for much. I'm just throwing that out there. Thanks for the great work! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jason Carr Posted July 25, 2015 Share Posted July 25, 2015 Makes sense @Xananax. Scripting/plugin support is something I keep getting reminded about, but still haven't yet been able to focus on. What scripting engine would you want to use? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Xananax Posted July 29, 2015 Author Share Posted July 29, 2015 Thanks for considering the option! If your question is addressed to me personally, I'm most comfy with Javascript or Python, or C#. But I'll use whatever is needed, Lua, Perl, Ruby, or custom, as long as there is at least a list of functions and a debug console. Since you're not making a gaming engine or something addressed to the masses (I mean, as far as the scripting part is concerned), I propose that the choice shouldn't stem from ease of use, but rather ease of implementation. If someone is going to make a script for Launchbox, chances are they already know how to code and will accommodate any choice you make. Plus, I think even if someone with 0 experience wanted to program something for Launchbox, the idea that, say, Lua is easy, but C# is hard is wrong, imho. Newbies can actually learn anything. I mean, that's how I personally learned how to code; I wanted to customize some software, and just went with examples and copy-pasted stuff for a while, and before I noticed, I was making large-scale websites and compiling my own software. Unless you go for Brainfuck or LOLCode, it'll be ok IMHO. For reference: XMBC/Kodi uses Python, but also allows you to write a scraper in XML MediaMonkey uses VBScript MediaPortal uses VisualBasic Winamp uses C Amarok uses Javascript ...So it really doesn't seem like there's any sort of consensus. So I would say, whatever already-made library has the most bindings to what you're using already, and is the easiest to just stick in there with minimal effort, just use that. The only consideration would be avoiding to use a language that needs a specific IDE. I'm often bothered by those languages as I use Linux and they mostly don't have support on there. As long as it can be hacked with a simple text editor, and compiled from the command line (or don't need to be compiled), go for it. TL;DR: implement the scripting language that is easiest to implement and has the most bindings with the actual language you use for Launchbox. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jason Carr Posted July 30, 2015 Share Posted July 30, 2015 Sure, makes sense. The easiest thing would probably be to support .NET DLL plugins. So C# and VB. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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