Hack 92. Discovering Your Favorite Writers, Producers, and Directors

   

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Hack 92 Discovering Your Favorite Writers, Producers , and Directors

Do you tend to favor the work of a particular director? Do the words of a particular writer keep you riveted to the screen? Chances are that you haven't given your favorite creatives much thought. Thankfully, TiVo keeps track of them for you .

A variation on [Hack #91], let's give a little credit to the creativesthe writers, producers, and directorswhile at the same time learning a little more Tcl.

The Code

 #!/tvbin/tivosh  global creatives   proc addcreative { c type } {   global creatives   foreach epcreative $c {   set slashpos [string first "" $epcreative]   set repcreative \  "  [string range $epcreative 0 [expr $slashpos - 1]],"  [RETURN]    set repcreative \  "  $repcreative [string range $epcreative [expr $slashpos + 1]  [RETURN]    end]  "  set repcreative \  "  $repcreative  $type  "  lappend creatives $repcreative  }   }  # open the database set db [dbopen] # pull out the first 50 recorded shows from the database set recdir "/Recording/NowShowingByTitle" RetryTransaction {     set files [mfs scan $recdir -count 50]     } set creatives { } while { [llength $files] > 0 } {     # iterate through the shows we extracted     foreach rec $files {         # grab the FSID of the program from the list         set fsid [lindex $rec 0]         RetryTransaction {             # get the object that represents this recording and the             # object that represents this episode.  wrap it in              # a catch just in case             # it doesn't work             set recordingobj [db $db openid $fsid]             set episodeobj [dbobj [dbobj $recordingobj get Showing] get Program]  # pull out the list of writers, directors, and producers of the   # shows.  none of these are guaranteed to be here   set epwriters [dbobj $episodeobj get Writer]   set epdirectors [dbobj $episodeobj get Director]   set epproducers [dbobj $episodeobj get ExecProducer]   }   # add all those creatives to a list to work with   addcreative $epwriters "Writer  "  addcreative $epdirectors "Director  "  addcreative $epproducers "ExecProducer  "     }     # and grab the next 49 television shows  [RETURN]  set lastName [lindex [lindex $files end] 1]     RetryTransaction {         set files [mfs scan $recdir -start $lastName -count 50]     }     if { $lastName == [lindex [lindex $files 0] 1] } {         set files [lrange $files 1 end]     } } # create a new list called fcreatives that is the frequency count # of the creatives on the shows we have watched set fcreatives { } foreach l $creatives {     if ![ info exists a($l) ] {          set a($l) 0      }     incr a($l)  } foreach i [ array names a ] {     lappend fcreatives [list $i $a($i)] } # and let's quickly alphabetically sort then print the list set fcreatives [lsort -index 0 $fcreatives] foreach fcreative $fcreatives {     puts "[lindex $fcreative 0]  [lindex $fcreative 1]" } 

Save the code as creatives.tcl in TiVo's /var/hack/bin directory and make it executable:

 bash-2.02#  chmod 755 /var/hack/bin/creatives.tcl  

Running the Hack

Run the script from TiVo's command line Section 3.3:

 bash-2.02#  /var/hack/bin/creatives.tcl  Babbit, Jamie  Director  1 Beeman, Greg  Director  1 Berlanti, Greg  ExecProducer  15 Berman, Rick  ExecProducer  1 Braga, Brannon  Writer  1 Bruckheimer, Jerry  ExecProducer  1 Camp, Brandon  ExecProducer  1 Cochran, Bob  ExecProducer  1 Fattore, Gina  Writer  5 Foy, John  ExecProducer  1 Fricke, Anna  Writer  3 Friedman, Maggie  Writer  3 Garcia, Liz  Writer  1 Gereghty, Bill  Director  1 Gough, Al  Writer  1 Gough, Alfred  ExecProducer  4 Jackson, Joshua  Director  1 Kapinos, Tom  Writer  3 Kowalski, Peter  Director  1 Kroll, Jon  ExecProducer  1 Lange, Michael  Director  3 Leahy, Janet  Writer  1 Leder, Mimi  ExecProducer  1 Marshall, James  Director  1 McNeill, Robbie  Director  2 Millar, Miles  ExecProducer  4 Millar, Miles  Writer  1 Moore, Jason  Director  1 Nash, Bruce  ExecProducer  1 Nelson, Todd  ExecProducer  1 ... 

To capture your list of favorite writers, producers, and directors as a pipe-delimited text file, use the > redirect symbol and supply the name of a file to which to write. For example, sending output to a file called creatives.out in the /var/out directory would look like this:

 bash-2.02#  /var/hack/bin/creatives.tcl > /var/out/creatives.out  

Take note that people can be listed under more than one role, and they can also be listed more than once for a given role. Take a look at Miles Millar; he was credited four times as an Executive Producer and once as a writer. If we gather enough of this information over time, we can create our own Internet Movie Database (http://www.imdb.com) from our television listings alone.

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