STV to make a placeshifter user READONLY?

[Gaurav]

Please help me customize the default Sage STV to achieve this in the simplest way possible.

I want to temporarily give placeshifter access to a friend so he can watch selected recordings on my server.

I want the friend to be able to ONLY view recordings for two particular favorites
a. Fav created by title - (French Open)
b. Fav created by category - Soccer

He should not be able to delete recordings or change any settings.

If possible, the recordings should not even be marked as watched when the friend views them.

Thx

[Gaurav]

Well...i was able to achieve this partially by deleting all the shortcuts from the main menu (except the shortcut to SageTV recordings).

What i could not do was limit the list of recordings to the two favorites.
I know this is possible but is beyond me.

Regarding my desire for recordings to not be marked even after my friend watches them...is this even possible ?

[GKusnick]

I don't know if it's possible to stop them from being marked Watched, but it's certainly possible to make a note of the Watched status before playing them, and set them back to that status again afterward. See IsWatched and SetWatched in the AiringAPI documentation at http://download.sage.tv/api/index.html.

Limiting the list of recordings to specific titles should also be possible using FilterByMethod in the Database API.

How bulletproof do you need this to be? If you trust your friend not to try to mess things up deliberately, then continuing to hack away at the standard STV might be a viable approach, but unless you're really thorough, you should expect that there might be loopholes he could use to bypass your limitations if he's so inclined.

On the other hand, if you need to be absolutely sure he can't do anything you don't want him to do, then you're probably better off starting from an empty STV and adding in only those functions you want him to have. However that approach might require more time and programming skill than you're prepared to devote to this "temporary" arrangement.

[Gaurav]

thanks for your help.

I had looked at the API doc. The documentation mentions the class parameters but does not specify the values that can be passed for data, method etc. Is there any other documentation that i need to read ?

This doesn't have to be bulletproof. just dont want my friend playing with my settings. although my need is only till the end of the soccer world cup, it would be nice to have such an STV handy.

[mazakmaster]

Try using Orb instead, It does all the things you want.....