Personal Video Database

9. Built in parsing functions

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function Pos(Substr : WideString; Str: WideString): Integer
Returns the index value of the first character in a specified substring that occurs in a given string.


function PosFrom(const SubStr, Str : WideString; FromIndex : Integer) : Integer
Returns the index value of the first character in a specified substring that occurs in a given string. Search starts from FromIndex[/b]


function LastPos(const SubStr, Str : WideString) : Integer
Returns the last index value of the first character in a specified substring that occurs in a given string.


function PrevPos(const SubStr, Str : WideString; APos : Integer) : Integer
Returns the index value of the first character in a specified substring that occurs in a given string before APos.


function RemoveTags(AText : WideString; doLineBreaks : Boolean) : WideString
Removes all HTML tags from AText. Ex.: <a href="http://test.com">Test</a> will be converted to Test. If doLineBreaks is set to True, then <br> will be converted to a line break.


function ExplodeString(AText : WideString; var Items : TWideArray; Delimiters : WideString) : Integer
Splits a string AText  into separate values using Delimiters. The values are written into a dynamic array Items.


function Copy(S: WideString; Index, Count: Integer): WideString
Returns a substring of a string.


procedure Delete(var S: WideString; Index, Count: Integer)
Removes a substring from a string.


procedure Insert(Source: WideString; var Dest: WideString; Index: Integer)
Inserts a substring into a string beginning at a specified point.


function Length(S: WideString): Integer
Returns the number of characters in a string.


function Trim(S: WideString): WideString
Trims leading and trailing spaces and control characters from a string.


function CompareText(S1, S2: WideString): Integer
Compares two strings by ordinal value without case sensitivity.
The function returns 0 if both strings are equal, a value > 0 if S1 > S2 and a value < 0 if S1 < S2.


function CompareStr(S1, S2: WideString): Integer
Compares two strings by ordinal value with case sensitivity.
The function returns 0 if both strings are equal, a value > 0 if S1 > S2 and a value < 0 if S1 < S2.


function UpperCase(S: WideString): WideString
Returns a copy of a string in uppercase.


function LowerCase(S: WideString): WideString
Returns a copy of a string in lowercase.


function StringReplace(S, OldPattern, NewPattern: WideString; ReplaceAll : Boolean; IgnoreCase : Boolean; WholeWord: Boolean): WideString 
Returns a string with occurrences of one substring replaced by another substring. If ReplaceAll is set to True, the all occurrences of OldPattern will be replaced. If IgnoreCase is set to True, then the comparison operation is case insensitive.


function StrToInt(const S: WideString): Integer
Converts a string that represents an integer (decimal or hex notation) to a number.


function IntToStr(const Value: Integer): WideString
Converts an integer number to a string.


function StrToFloat(const S: WideString): Extended
Converts a given string to a floating-point value.


  function FloatToStr(const Value: Extended): WideString
Converts a floating point value to a string.


function HTMLValues(const HTML : WideString; ABegin, AEnd, ItemBegin, ItemEnd : WideString; ValDelim : WideString; var Pos : Integer) : WideString
Gathers all values from HTML into a string using ValDelim as delimiter. The function searches for ABegin first starting from Pos, from this point it gathers values between ItemBegin and ItemEnd until AEnd is found. The last position is returned in Pos variable.


function HTMLValues2(const HTML : WideString; ABegin, AEnd, ItemBegin, ItemEnd : WideString; ValDelim : WideString; var Pos : Integer) : WideString
The same as HTMLValues, but this version searches for an end tag character > after each ItemBegin.


function TextBetween(const HTML : WideString; ABegin, AEnd : WideString; doLineBreaks : Boolean; var Pos : Integer) : WideString
Returns plain text without HTML tags from HTML, between ABegin and AEnd. The function searches for ABegin from position Pos.


function HTMLToText(const HTML : WideString) : WideString
Replaces all escaped HTML characters (like &lt;&gt;&amp;&quot;) with normal characters (like <, >, $, ")

7. function GetDownloadURL : String;

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If you script just needs to find a movie/person and download one page with information you will need to write code like this:

Result := SEARCH_STR

If you need to download and parse more than one page I recommend to define extra variables or an array of URLs that need to be downloaded. Code for 2 information pages will look like this:

   
 if CreditsURL = '' then
  Result := SEARCH_STR
 else
  Result := SecondPageURL;


You can also use the Mode variable as an extra flag. This code is for 3 pages using Mode variable:


 if (Mode > smNormal) AND (PosterURL <> '') then
  Result := PosterURL
 else
 if CreditsURL <> '' then
  Result := CreditsURL
 else
  Result := SEARCH_STR;


If you download poster in a movie information script or a photo in a person information script than make sure URL to an image is passed after all other pages are retrived!

1.

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Open the Scripts directory and make a copy of an existing script with another name.

2.

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Open the file in a text editor (I recommend Notepad++)


3. Constants

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I the beginning of the file there are usually constants defined for ease of setting up the script and making it better readable. You do not have to use constants, but it is recommended. There must always be a const operator before constants definitions.

Constants after the line //Script data describe the script:

SCRIPT_VERSION	Version of the script
SCRIPT_NAME	Short script name
SCRIPT_DESC	Long script description
SCRIPT_LANG	Language of the information retrieved. Ex.: $09 - English, $19 - Russian, $07 - German. A full list can be found here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms776294(VS.85).aspx (you need the number after 0x from "Prim. lang. identifier" column). It is not very important to define the right language, but recommended for better usability.
SCRIPT_TYPE	Script type: movie information script (constant stMovies) person information script (constant stPeople) poster script (constant stPoster)
BASE_URL	The first level domain of the web-site. Ex.: http://www.amazon.com
RATING_NAME	Name of the site rating with the word "rating"
SEARCH_STR	URL to use for searching the web-site. %s is replaced with a movie title or person name
CODE_PAGE	Web-site encoding. For example if the web-site encoding is windows-1250 than this constant should have a value of 1250. You can usually find the web-page encoding in the beginning of a html file. Needed HTML tags look like this: <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1"/>. If you do not know what encoding to use, just enter 0 to let the program auto detect it. A full list of supported values can be found here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms776446.aspx

You can also define your own constants. (For example to enable users to turn some script functions on or off).


4. Global variables

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Script global variables are defined after the line //Global variables. Global variables can store any information that should be available in all parts of the script. var operator has to precede global or local variables (local variables are only accessible from a function they are defined in)

It is not obligatory to define any global variables, but I recommend to define at least one variable to track current script state. In my scripts it is defined like this: Mode : Byte;

-Improved	Script Engine
-Improved	world-art.ru Script
-Improved	Searching with Allmovie.com script
-Improved	Check for data compatibility when importing from CSV, Excel, AMC
-Fixed	Searching with IMDB plugin
-Fixed	Program termination when switching from movie to an episode in Edit mode
-Fixed	Save images in Database option did not effect Photos
-Fixed	All credits from IMDB importing to writer field in some circumstances
-Fixed	Advanced Search
-Changed	Added some additional video file extensions

Fixed in 0.9.8.13 (this version is not announced yet, but is already on the server)

Thanks for your corrections and suggestions. I'll fix the language file in the next update.

-Improved	Script Engine (now any fields can be retrieved including posters)
-Improved	world-art.ru Script
-Fixed	Some issues with episodes
-Fixed	Some issues with import from web
-Fixed	Batch plugins with scripts

The plugin searchers by orig. title and title (if nothing found by orig.title) in DVD section on Amazon.

For which movies does the plugin find nothing?

PVD accepts length as hh:mm:ss or a number of minutes without text after or before it.

Great research, Rick and very helpful for other users! Thanks.