Error in XMLTV plugins?

[owilsky]

Hi,

I've been having a big problem with xmltv plugin for some months now, so I did some tests.

Description of the problem:
When a show does not have a subtitle, XMLTV plugin generates identical ShowIDs when the title is identical.
This should not happen because the original programmer of the plugin included some code to prevent this: (this thread is about show.java):

if (this.episodeName != null) {
  crc.update(this.episodeName.getBytes());
} else {
  if (this.startString != null) {
    crc.update(this.startString.getBytes());
  }
}

Unfortunately an empty String does not seem to be null and also it does not seem to be "" in Java which I tested this way:

public void writeLog(String msg) {
  try {
    File outputFile = new File("C:/Program Files/Frey Technologies/SageTV/xmltv/log.txt");
    FileWriter out = new FileWriter(outputFile, true); //append to file
    out.write(msg);
    out.close();
  }
  catch (IOException ioe) {}
}

in public void EPGInsert:

  writeLog("title=   '"+this.title+"'\n");
  if (this.episodeName==null) writeLog("Episode= null\n");
  if (this.episodeName=="") writeLog("Episode= empty\n");
  if (this.episodeName!="" && this.episodeName!=null) writeLog("Episode= '"+this.episodeName+"'\n");

Note that I never got "Episode= null" or "Episode= empty" in my log.

My solution:
replace "!=null" with ".length()!=0" :

        if (this.title.length() != 0)
            crc.update(this.title.getBytes());
        if (this.episodeName.length() != 0) {
            crc.update(this.episodeName.getBytes());
        } else {
            if (this.startString.length() != 0) {
                crc.update(this.startString.getBytes());
            }
        }
        if (this.desc.length() != 0)
            crc.update(this.desc.getBytes());

Conclusion:
I did much more logging so I saw that I got identical ShowIDs on shows with identical titles and empty subtitles. The startString has never been considered.
After my changes the log showed perfectly different ShowIDs for shows without subtitles because in these cases the startString has been considered.
Attached you'll find the changed plugin with sources.

I hope my English is clear enough

Any comments on this?

Oliver

[nielm]

I not seen a problem like this: I always get shows with no episode-name/sub-title recorded separately... Do your XMLTV *files* contain programmes with empty <sub-title> elements? -- it should be that the parser will not populate the episode name with anything (meaning that it will be ==null) if there is no <sub-title> in the <programme>... This fix will probably cause an NPE in programmes with no <sub-title>

But yes, it is probably an oversight that empty sub-titles are included and should be corrected: Perhaps it should be:

if ( this.episodeName !=null && this.episodeName.trim().length() != 0)

The trouble is that there are at least 5 XMLTV plugins! (see the XMTLV page on the sage-community site in my sig!)

[owilsky]

Originally Posted by nielm

I not seen a problem like this: I always get shows with no episode-name/sub-title recorded separately... Do your XMLTV *files* contain programmes with empty <sub-title> elements? -- it should be that the parser will not populate the episode name with anything (meaning that it will be ==null) if there is no <sub-title> in the <programme>... This fix will probably cause an NPE in programmes with no <sub-title>

Yes, I have indeed often shows with <subtitle></subtitle>, which are e.g. news. I don't use xmltv as my grabber but TV Movie Clickfinder, which uses an MS Access Database, a self writte tool creates xml files out of the DB. So I always have the subtitle tags (never null) but sometimes they are empty.

Originally Posted by nielm

But yes, it is probably an oversight that empty sub-titles are included and should be corrected: Perhaps it should be:

if ( this.episodeName !=null && this.episodeName.trim().length() != 0)

The trouble is that there are at least 5 XMLTV plugins! (see the XMTLV page on the sage-community site in my sig!)

Hey, the trim() is really a good idea... just in case...

Oliver

[nielm]

I think that an empty sub-title is not allowed inthe XMLTV spec -- maybe passing it through tv_cat or tv_sort mught clean it up
(the plugin should still cope with slightly out-of-spec data)

[owilsky]

OK, I updated the plugin:

- checks if xmltag.trim().length() !=0
- checks if xmltag != null

I updated the upload on post #1 for those who are interested. Works much better for me now if subtitle is empty.

Oliver